If 



THOREAU 
THE POET-NATURALIST 



THOREAU 
THE POET-NATURALIST 

WITH MEMORIAL VERSES 

BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 

NEW EDITION, ENLARGED 
EDITED BY F. B. SANBORN 



i/^ 



MY GREATEST SKILL HAS BEEN TO WANT BUT LITTLE. FOR 
JOY I COULD EiMBRACE THE EARTH. I SHALL DELIGHT TO BE 
BURIED IN IT. AND THEN I THINK OF THOSE AMONG MEN, WHO 
WILL KNOW THAT I LOVE THEM, THOUGH I TELL THEM NOT. 
H. D. T. 



CHARLES E. GOODSPEED 
BOSTON: 1902 



Copyright, 1902, by F. B. Sanborn 
Published November, 1902 



3 



^^ 



^^ 









D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston 



DEDICATION 

Silent and serene^ 
Th vC soul emancipates her kind. 

She leaves the generations to their fate^ 
Uncompromised hy grief. She cannot weep: 
She sheds no tears Jor us, — our mother. Nature! 
She is ne'er rude nor vexed, not rough or careless; 
Out of temper ne'er, patient as sweet, though winds 
In winter brush her leaves away, and time 
To human senses breathes through Jr-ost. 

My friend ! 
Learn, from, the joy qf Nature, thus to be 
Not only all resigned to thy worst fears. 
But, like herself, siiperior to them, all. 
Nor merely superficial in thy smiles! 
And th'ough the inmost fibres of thy heart 
May goodness constant fiow, and fix in that 
The ever-lapsing tides, that lesser depths 
Deprive qf half their salience. Be, throughoid, 
Trtie as the inmost Ife that moves the world. 
And in demeanor shozv a firm content. 
Annihilating change. 

Thus Henry lived. 
Considerate to his kind. His love bestowed 
Was not a gift infractions , halfway done; 
But with some mellow goodness, like a sun. 
He shone o'er mortal hearts, and taught their buds 
[ V J 



DEDICATION 

To blossom early, thence ripej'ruit and seed. 
Forbearing too much counsel, yet with blows 
By pleading reason urged, he touched their thought 
As with a mild surprise, and they were good. 
Even if they kneio not whence that motive came; 
Nor yet suspected thatj'rom Henry'' s heart — 
His warm, confiding heart — the impidse Jlowed. 



These lines were not originally addrest to Mr. Thoreau, nor, indeed, describ 
literally whatever character. But were meant for Mr. Emerson, w. e. c. 

[ vi ] 



"Si tibi pulchra doraus, si splendida mensa, quid inde? 
Si species auri, argenti quoque raassa, quid inde? 
Si tibi sponsa decens, si sit generosa, quid inde? 
Si tibi sunt nati, si praedia magna, quid inde ? 
Si fueris pulcher, fortis, dives ve, quid inde? 
Si doceas alios in quolibet arte, quid inde? 
Si longus servorum inserviat ordo, quid inde ? 
Si faveat mundus, si prospera cuncta, quid inde? 
Si prior, aut abbas, si dux, si papa, quid inde ? 
Si felix annos regnes per mille, quid inde? 
Si rota fortunae se tollit ad astra, quid inde? 
Tam cito, tamque cito fugiunt haec ut nihil, inde. 
Sola manet virtus : nos glorificabimur, inde. 
Ergo Deo pare, bene nam provenit tibi inde." 

Laura Bassi. Sonnet on the gate of the Specola at Bologna. 

"From sea and mountain, city and wilderness. 
Earth lifts its solemn voice ; but thou art fled ; 
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes 
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee 
Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! 
Now thou art not. Art and eloquence. 
And all the shows of the world, are frail and vain 
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade ! 
It is a woe too deep for tears when all 
Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit. 
Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
Those who remain behind nor sobs nor groans, 
But pale despair and cold tranquillity. 
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things. 
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were." 



"The memory, like a cloudless sky, 
The conscience, like a sea at rest." 



Shelley. 



Tenkyson. 



' Esperer ou craindre pour un autre est la seule chose qui donne 
k rhomme le sentiment complet de sa propre existence." 

Eugenie de Guerin. 
[ vii ] 



INTRODUCTION 

lished, although a few appeared in Thoreau's contributions 
to the "Atlantic Monthly," and in Emerson's eulogy. Had 
the book appeared then, early in 1864, as Channing expected, 
it would have been a fresh and varied addition to what the 
public had of Thoreau's original and carefully written ob- 
servations on nature and man. 

With all this preparation, Channing in 1863 composed 
a hundred and thirty-four large manuscript pages in a book 
now lying before me, his first draft of "Thoreau, the Poet- 
Naturalist"; copied it out, with omissions and additions, and 
sent me the first half of the copy for publication, week 
by week, in the "Boston Commonwealth" newspaper, which 
I had begun to edit in February, 1863, and to which Miss 
Thoreau had contributed several of her brother's unprinted 
poems. I copyrighted the work in my own name, as Mr. 
Channing desired, and began to publish it early in 1864. 
After several weeks, I omitted the weekly chapter of Thoreau 
(whose readers were much fewer forty years ago than now), 
in order to give my limited space for literary matter to 
other contributors for a fortnight. At this omission my 
friend took offence, and recalled his manuscript, so that 
the work remained a fragment for nearly ten years, during 
which time much of the unprinted manuscript of Thoreau 
found its way into print, and stimulated the desire of readers 



INTRODUCTION 

to know more of the author. This suggested to me and to 
Channing that he might issue his work in a volume, as 
he had "The Wanderer" (1871), which proved in some de- 
gree popular. I made an arrangement with the late Thomas 
Niles, then the head of the house of Roberts Brothers, by 
which an edition of fifteen hundred copies of the biography 
should be published in the autumn of 1873; and the volume 
known to libraries and collectors as "Thoreau,the Poet-Natu- 
ralist" made its appearance, and sold moderately well. Indeed, 
it was the most popular of all Channing''s nine volumes, pub- 
lished by him at intervals from 1843 to 1886. It escaped 
the Boston fires which had destroyed the unsold copies of 
"The Wanderer," and in twenty years was so completely 
sold out that it was with difficulty the publishers procured 
for me a single copy for presentation to our Plymouth friend, 
Marston Watson of Hillside, to whom Channing had omitted 
to send it, or who may have given away his copy. A copy 
now and then coming to market at present sells for five 
dollars. 

But the volume of 1873 (now out of print and its copy- 
right expired) was very different from that composed in 
1863. With the perversity of genius Channing had gone over 
his first draft, omitting much, making portions of the rest 
obscure and enigmatical, but enriching it with the treasures 



INTRODUCTION 

of his recondite learning in mottoes, allusions, and number- 
less citations, — the whole without much method, or with a 
method of his own, not easily followed by the reader, who 
had not the guide-board of an index to help him out. Withal, 
Channing had inserted here and there matchless passages of 
description, his own or Thoreau''s, which made the book then, 
and ever since, a mine of citations for every biographer of 
the poet-naturalist who succeeded him, — beginning with the 
Scotch litterateur who called himself "H. A. Page,"" and " 
whose little volume was soon reprinted in Boston by Tho- 
reau's publishers. 

In my new edition, based upon a copy with the author*'s 
revision and notes, I have inserted here and there passages 
of no great length which I find in the original sketch, and 
which make the meaning plainer and the story more con- 
secutive. At the end of this volume will be found some addi- 
tions to the "Memorial Poems" which evidently belong there. 

But a still more singular peculiarity marked the volume of 
1873. As its printing went on, the publisher (Mr. Niles) con- 
sulted me in regard to it, finding Mr. Channing not always 
responsive to his suggestions; and finally said to me, for the 
author's information, that the volume was about fifty pages 
smaller than he had expected to make it. Could not Mr. 
Channing, then, who seemed to have much material at his 

[ xii ] 



INTRODUCTION 

disposal, add the requisite pages to the work ? Certainly, was 
the reply; and how was it done? From the long-deferred 
manuscript of 1853, "Country Walking" by name, containing 
long passages from the journals of Emerson and Thoreau, 
with bits of actual conversation; sketches and snatches of 
character by Channing himself, and here and there a poem 
or fragment by Channing or Emerson, — from this medley of 
records, meant for another purpose, Channing selected the 
required number of pages, — cut the original book open in 
the midst, and inserted the new-old matter. It makes the 
bulk of sixty-seven pages (old edition), from the hundred and 
twentieth to the hundred and eighty-seventh, inclusive, and 
is so printed that the authors themselves could hardly pick 
out their own share in this olio. In the revision Channing 
has indicated with some clearness (to my eyes) who is the 
spokesman in each colloquy, and I have prefixed or affixed 
the names of the interlocutors in most cases. This matter, 
though improperly given to the world thirty years ago, and 
occasioning Mr. Emerson, and possibly Miss Thoreau, some 
vexation, has now been public property so long that I reprint 
it without hesitation, but sometimes changing its order. I 
have also inserted occasionally passages out of Thoreau's 
journals or papers which have not yet been published, per- 
haps, but the printing of which will only add to the value 

[ xiii ] 



INTRODUCTION 

of that great store of unprinted manuscript which Mr. E. H. 
Russell of Worcester now holds, and is preparing to pub- 
lish in a more methodical form than Thoreau's good friend 
Blake did. 

I have felt a strong personal interest in this biography, 
not only from my long friendship both with Thoreau and 
Channing, but because I have been so conversant, for nearly 
forty years, with the contents of the volume, and with the 
manuscripts out of which they were condensed. And I have 
prefixed to this edition a portrait, not of Thoreau, but Ellery 
Channing himself, taken as a photograph by that excellent 
artist, Mr. Henry Smith of the Studio Building, Boston, not 
long after the publication of the first edition in 1873. At the 
time, three sittings were given by Mr. Channing, all in one 
day, but presenting different views of the sitter. That chosen 
for this book is not his most poetic aspect, — which is reserved 
for the volume of Channing's "Poems of Sixty -five Years," 
now in press at Philadelphia, — but rather the shrewd, hu- 
morous face, with its ancestral resemblances and reminders 
of kinship, which seems most fitting for this prose volume. 
Those who remember Mr. Channing''s cousin, the late John 
Murray Forbes, at the age (about fifty-six) when this por- 
trait was made, will be struck, as I was, with a certain resem- 
blance, — as also to the interesting Perkins family of Boston, 

[ xiv ] 



INTRODUCTION 

from whom both Mr. Forbes and Ellery Channing derived 
many traits. Intellectually, the cousinship of John Forbes and 
Ellery Channing showed itself in that surprising quickness 
and perspicacity which, in the elder, the Merchant, was di- 
rected towards the secrets of Fortune and the management 
of men, — and in the younger, the Poet, towards every as- 
pect of Man and of Nature, imaginatively transcribed in that 
volume which Shakespeare studied, saying, 

''lu Nature's infinite book of secrecy 
A little I can read." 

Channing read much therein: had his gift of expression 
been coequal with his extraordinary insight, none would ever 
think of denying to him the title which he modestly claimed 
for himself, — the high name of Poet. He had, in fact, more 
completely than any man since Keats, the traditional poetical 
temperament, intuitive, passionate, capricious, with by turns 
the most generous and the most exacting spirit. One other 
trait he had, never seen by me in such force in any other, — 
the power to see and the impulse to state all sides of any 
matter which presented itself to his alert and discriminating 
intellect. He would utter an opinion, in itself pertinent, but 
partial; in a moment, if not disputed, he would bring forth 
the complementary opinion, and so go round his subject until 
its qualities had been exhausted; and this not with the for- 

[XV] 



INTRODUCTION 

mality of syllogisms or enthymemes, but as the poet's eye, 
in Shakespeare's phrase, 

'*Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven." 

The "Memorial Verses" at the end of the biography are here 
printed with some alterations and additions. Their connec- 
tion with his friend Thoreau is sometimes slight, but the 
connection existed in his enduring memory and his tender 
heart, and among them are some of his best lines. The Cape 
poems, commemorative in part of his walks along the sands 
with Thoreau, and in part of earlier joys and sorrows at 
Truro, were, I believe, regarded by Emerson as the best of 
his middle-age verses, except the Ode at the consecration 
of the Cemetery, in 1855, where his ashes now repose. The 
"Still River" deals with a walk from Ayer to Lancaster, pass- 
ing by a village or two, and the lonely farmhouse of "Fruit- 
lands," where Alcott and his friends in 1843-44 played out 
their idyll of an ascetic community. I have added to this 
poem, which was written before 1853, a concluding passage 
describing the winter landscape in the valley of the Nashua, 
into which, not far from Fruitlands, the stream called Still 
River quietly flows. 

F. B. Sanborn. 

Concord, April 15, 1902. 

[ xvi ] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. EARLY LIFE 1 

II. MANNERS 27 

III. READING 47 

IV, NATURE 63 

V. LITERARY THEMES 81 

VI. SPRING AND AUTUMN 91 

VII. PHILOSOPHY 109 

VIII. WALKS AND TALKS 131 

IX. WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED l6l 

X. THE LATTER YEAR 179 

XI. MULTUM IN PARVO 197 

XII. HIS WRITINGS 227 

XIII. PERSONALITIES 257 

XIV. FIELD SPORTS 279 

XV. CHARACTERS 303 

XVI. MORAL 325 

MEMORIAL VERSES 

I. TO HENRY 347 

II. WHITE POND 347 

[ xvii ] 



CONTENTS 

MEMORIAL VERSES (CONTINUED) 
III. A LAMENT 
IV. MORRICE LAKE 
V. TEARS IN SPRING 
VI. THE MILL BROOK 
VII. STILLRIVER 
VIII. TRURO 

IX. BAKER FARM 
X. FLIGHT OF GEESE 
INDEX 



VAGE 
351 

352 
354> 
355 
358 
363 
370 
373 
379 



[ xviii ] 



PREFACE 

Gray says that ^^ Hermes'''' Harris is what he ^^ calls the shallozv- 

profound.'''' Dr. Johnson says that in the dedication to Harris's 

'"'■ Hermes^'' of fourteen lines, there are six grammatical Jaidts. 

This is as much as we could expect in an English pedant whose 

work treats of grammar: zae trust our prologue will prove 

more drop-r'ipe, even 'rf the whole prove dull, — duU as the last 

7iew comedy. 

In a biographic thesis there can hardly occur very much to 

amuse, if of one who was rejlective and not passionate, and 

who might have entered like Anthony Wood in his Journal, 

^^This day old Joan began to make my bed,'''' — an entry not 

fine enough for Walpole. At the same time the account of a 

writer''s stock in trade may be set off' like the catalogues of 

George Robins, auctioneer, with illustrations even in Latin or, 

as Marlowe says — 

"The learned Greek, rich in fit epithets. 
Blest in the lovely marriage of pure words." 

Byron'' s bath at Newstead Abbey is described as a dark and 
cellar-like hole. The halos about the brozvs of authors tarnish 
with time. Iteration, too, must be respected, — that law of 
Nature. Aidhors carry their robes of state not on their backs, 
but, like the Indians seen by Wafer, in a basket behind them, 
— ^Hhe times'' epitome.'''' But as the cheerfid host says: — 

[ xix ] 



PREFACE 

"I give thee all, I can no more, 
If poor the offering he," 

the best scraps in the larder, like Pip's pork-pie. 

A literary life may acquire value by contrast. Goldsmith in 
the ^'' Good- Matured Man'''' says, ^^ Never mind the world, my 
dear: you were never in a pleasanter place in your life. Tender- 
ness is a virtue, Mr. Twitch.'''' Like the Lady Br'illiana Harley, 
aidhors can say of their servants: "/ take it as a speciall 
providence of God, that I have so Jroward a made aboute me 
as Mary is, sence I love peace and quietnes so well: she has 
bene extremely Jroward since I have bine ill; I did not think 
that any would have bine so colericke. I woiUd I coidd put a 
little water in her zaine.'''' 

Claude Lorraine used to say, "/ sell you my landscapes: 
the figures I give away.''"' So there are patch-work quilts made 
by the saints where bits of fine silk are sewed on pieces of waste 
paper, — that seems, madam, not that is. Bid recall the trope 
that ^^very near to admiration is the wish to admire^'' and 
permit the excellence of the subject to defray in a measure the 
meanness of the treatment: — 

''Stars now vanish without number, 
Sleepy planets set and slumber," i 



1 Vaucrhan. 

o 

[xx] 



EARLY LIFE 



'Wit is the Soul's powder." 

Davenant. 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY LIFE 

The subject of this sketch was bom in the town of Concord, 
Massachusetts, on the twelfth day of July, 1817. The old- 
fashioned house on the Virginia road, its roof nearly reaching 
to the ground in the rear, remains as it was^ when Henry 
David Thoreau first saw the light in the easternmost of its 
upper chambers. It was the residence of his grandmother, 
and a perfect piece of our New England style of building, with 
its gray, unpainted boards, its grassy, unfenced door-yard. 
The house is somewhat isolate and remote from thorough- 
fares ; the Virginia road, an old-fashioned, winding, at-length- 
deserted pathway, the more smiling for its forked orchards, 
tumbling walls, and mossy banks. About the house are pleas- 
ant, sunny meadows, deep with their beds of peat, so cheer- 
ing with its homely, hearth-like fragrance; and in front runs 
a constant stream through the centre of that great tract 
sometimes called "Bedford levels," — this brook, a source of 
the Shawsheen River, It was lovely he should draw his first 
breath in a pure country air, out of crowded towns, amid 
the pleasant russet fields. His parents were active, vivacious 
people; his grandfather by the father's side coming from the 
Isle of Jersey, a Frenchman and Churchman at home, who 
married in Boston a Scotch woman called Jeanie Burns. On 
his mother's side the descent is from the well-known Jones 
1 No longer so in 1902. f. b. s. 

[3] 



THOREAU 

family of Weston, Massachusetts, and from Rev. Asa Dunbar, 
a graduate of Harvard College, who preached in Salem, and 
at length settled in Keene, New Hampshire. As variable an 
ancestry as can well be afforded, with marked family char- 
acters on both sides. 

About a year and a half from Henry's birth, the family 
removed to the town of Chelmsford, thence to Boston, com- 
ing back however to Concord, when he was of a very tender 
age. His earliest memory almost of the town was a ride by 
Walden Pond with his grandmother, when he thought that 
he should be glad to live there. Henry retained a peculiar 
pronunciation of the letter r, with a decided French accent. 
He says, "September is the first month with a burr in it"; 
and his speech always had an emphasis, a burr in it. His 
great-grandmother's name was Marie le Galais ; and his grand- 
father, John Thoreau, was baptized April 28, 1754, and took 
the Anglican sacrament in the parish of St. Helier (Isle of 
Jersey), in May, 1773. Thus near to old France and the 
Church was our Yankee boy. 

As Henry is associated with Concord especially, I pass over 
several of his years after he left the Virginia road, for they 
were spent in Chelmsford and Boston. When he was fourteen 
months old, his family removed to Chelmsford, where they 
were settled for two years, and thence to Boston (his grand- 
father's town), where they lived three years before return- 
ing to Concord, At Chelmsford he was tossed by a cow, and 
again, by getting at an axe without advice, he cut off a good 
part of one of his toes; and once he fell from a stair. After 

[4] 



EARLY LIFE 

this last achievement, as after some others, he had a singular 
suspension of breath, with a purple hue in his face, — owing, 
I think, to his slow circulation (shown in his slow pulse 
through life) and hence the difficulty of recovering his breath. 
Perhaps a more active flow of blood might have afforded 
an escape from other and later troubles. I have heard many 
stories related by his mother about these early years; she 
enjoyed not only the usual feminine quantity of speech, but 
thereto added the lavishness of age. Would they had been 
better told, or better remembered! for my memory is as 
poor as was her talk perennial. He was always a thoughtful, 
serious boy, in advance of his years, — wishing to have and do 
things his own way, and ever fond of wood and field; honest, 
pure, and good; a treasure to his parents, and a fine example 
for less happily constituted younglings to follow. Thus Mr. 
Samuel Hoar gave him the title of "the judge" from his grav- 
ity; and the boys at the town school used to assemble about 
him as he sat on the fence, to hear his account of things. 

He drove his cow to pasture in Concord, with bare feet, 
like other village boys; and I recall that he remembered a 
certain field, a good distance from the village, through which 
we were walking, as that to which he drove his cow. He was 
reticent of biogi'aphical recollections, and had the habit not 
to dwell on the past. But he loved, I doubt not, to linger 
over the old familiar things of boyhood; and he has occa- 
sionally let fall some memory of the "Milldam" when he was 
a boy, and of the pond behind it, now a meadow; and of 
the many houses in which he lived, — for his was a moving 

[5] 



THOREAU 

family, — I have heard him rarely speak. Of these mansions 
(four of which he passed in his daily walk to the village post- 
office) I never heard him more than say, "I used to live in 
that house," or "There it was that so-and-so took place," — 
thus refreshing his memory by the existing locality. He was 
known among the lads of his age as one who did not fear 
mud or water, nor paused to lift his followers over the ditch. 
So in his later journeys, if his companion was footsore and 
loitered, he steadily pursued the road, making his strength 
self-serviceable. 

''Who sturdily could gang. 
Who cared neither for wind nor wet. 
In lands where'er he past." 

That wildness that in him nothing could subdue still lay 
beneath his culture. Once when a follower was done up with 
headache and incapable of motion, hoping his associate would 
comfort him and perhaps afford him a sip of tea, he said, 
"There are people who are sick in that way every morning, 
and go about their affairs," and then marched off about his. 
In such limits, so inevitable, was he compacted. 

Thoreau was not of those who linger on the past: he had 
little to say and less to think of the houses or thoughts in 
which he had lived. They were, indeed, many mansions. He 
was entered of Harvard College in the year 1833, and was a 
righteous and respectable student, having done a bold read- 
ing in English poetry, mastering Chalmers's collection, even 
to some portions or the whole of Davenanfs "Gondibert.'' 
He made no college acquaintance which served him practi- 

[6] 



EARLY LIFE 

cally in after life, and partially escaped "his class," admiring 
the memory of the class secretary. No doubt, the important 
event to him in early manhood was his journey to the White 
Mountains with his only brother John, who was the elder, 
and to whom he was greatly attached. With this brother he 
kept the Academy in Concord for a year or two directly 
after leaving college. This piece of travel by boat and afoot 
was one of the excursions which furnish dates to his life. The 
next important business outwardly was building for himself 
a small house close by the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, 
the result of economic forethought. In the year before he 
built for himself this only true house of his, at Walden, he 
assisted his father in building a house in the western part 
of Concord village, called "Texas." To this spot he was much 
attached, for it commanded an excellent view, and was re- 
tired; and there he planted an orchard. His own house is 
rather minutely described in his "Walden." It was just large 
enough for one, like the plate of boiled apple pudding he 
used to order of the restaurateur, and which, he said, consti- 
tuted his invariable dinner in a jaunt to the cit}^ Two was 
one too much in his house. It was a larger coat and hat, — 
a sentry-box on the shore, in the wood of Walden, ready 
to walk into in rain or snow or cold. As for its being in the 
ordinary meaning a house, it was so superior to the common 
domestic contrivances that I do not associate it with them. 
By standing on a chair you could reach into the garret, and 
a corn broom fathomed the depth of the cellar. It had no 
lock to the door, no curtain to the window, and belonged 



THOREAU 

to nature nearly as much as to man. It was a durable gar- 
ment, an overcoat, he had contrived and left by Walden, 
convenient for shelter, sleep, or meditation. His business 
taught him expedients to husband time: in our victimizing 
climate he was fitted for storms or bad walking; his coat 
must contain special convenience for a walker, with a note- 
book and spy -glass, — a soldier in his outfits. For shoddy he 
had an aversion: a pattern of solid Vermont gray gave him 
genuine satisfaction, and he could think of corduroy. His life 
was of one fabric. He spared the outfitters no trouble; he 
wished the material cut to suit him, as he was to wear it, 
not worshipping "the fashion" in cloth or opinion. He bought 
but few things, and "those not till long after he began to 
want them,*" so that when he did get them he was prepared 
to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet. 
For if he was a mystic or transcendentalist, he was also a 
natural philosopher to boot. He did not live to health or , 
exercise or dissipation, but work; his diet spare, his vigor 
supreme, his toil incessant. Not one man in a million loses 
so few of the hours of life; and he found soon what were 
"the best things in his composition, and then shaped the 
rest to fit them. The former were the midrib and veins of 
the leaf." Few were better fitted. He had an unusual degree 
of mechanic skill, and the hand that wrote "Walden"^ and 
"The Week" could build a boat or a house. 

1 In 1883 "Walden" had gone through twenty editions, "The Maine 
Woods," sixteen, — the former, no doubt, by sales at the Fitchburg Rail- 
road shanties on their picnic grounds ; the latter by the demand of travel- 

[8] 



EARLY LIFE 

Sometimes he picked a scanty drift-wood from his native 
stream, and made good book-cases, chests, and cabinets for 
his study. I have seen the friendly "wreck" drying by his 
Httle air-tight stove for those homely purposes. He bound 
his own books, and measured the farmers'* fields in his region 
by chain or compass. In more than one the bounds were 
detected by the surveyor, who was fond of metes and bounds 
in morals and deeds. Thus he came to see the inside of almost 
every farmer's house and head, his "pot of beans'" and mug 
of hard cider. Never in too much hurry for a dish of gossip, 
he could "sit out the oldest frequenter of the bar-room," 
as he believed, and was alive from top to toe with curiosity, 
— a process, it is true, not latent in our people. But if he 
learned, so he taught; and says he "could take one or twenty 
into partnership, gladly share his gains."" On his return from 
a journey, he not only emptied his pack of flowers, shells, 
seeds, and other treasures, but liberally contributed every 
fine or pleasant or desirable experience to those who needed, 
as the milkweed distributes its lustrous, silken seeds. 

Thus, on his return from one of his Maine journeys, he 
told the story at great length (though it was already written 
in his note-book) with the important details, not only to his 
family, but to his friends, with the utmost alacrity and plea- 
sure, — yet as if he were discharging a sacred duty, — then 

lers in the Maine woods, to Katadn, etc. ; a vast many of these "camping- 
out" excursions being now made. All his other books in 1883 remained 
in the first edition, except "The Week," which was entirely out of print. 
I should have supposed the "Cape Cod" would have been as valuable, 
w. E. c. 

[9] 



THOREAU 

wrote it out carefully in his Journal, and next as carefully 
corrected it for its issue to the public. This is indeed a rare 
talent. Most of us, if we have experiences, do not know 
how to describe them; or if we do, do not interest ourselves 
enough in them to give them forth for the benefit of others. 
He did this, — and so well and so universally, that it must 
be conceded to him as a special felicity. Things made a deep 
and ineffaceable impression on his mind. He had no trace of 
that want of memory which besets some amiable beings. Yet 
as I have said, he was reticent; so he was, remarkably in 
certain ways. I can mention that he never or rarely spoke 
to me of the Indians; never alluded to his collections on the 
subject; and, in all the years (about twenty) that I knew 
him intimately, maintained a profound silence on that (to 
him) altogether engrossing topic. But there was little bound 
to his usual communicativeness. 

Connected with this was his skill in asking questions, — 
a natural talent, long cultivated. Sometimes, where the mat- 
ter was important, he carried with him a string of leading 
questions, carefully written, which he had the ability to get 
as skilfully answered, — though, if there was a theory to 
maintain, with a possible overlapping to his side of the argu- 
ment. Ever on the search for knowledge, he lived to get in- 
formation; and as I am so far like Alfieri that I have almost 
no curiosity, I once said to him how surprised I was at 
the persistence of this trait in him. "What else is there in 
life.?" was his reply. He did not end, in this search, with the 
farmers, nor the broadcloth world; he knew another class of 

[ 10] 



EARLY LIFE 

men, who hang on the outskirts of society, — those who love 
"grog" and never to be seen abroad without a fish-pole or a 
gun in their hands; with elfish locks, and of a community 
with nature not to be surpassed. They lived more out of 
doors than he did, and faced more mud and water without 
flinching, — sitting all day in the puddles, like frogs, with 
a line in the river, catching pouts, or wading mid-leg in 
marshes, to shoot woodcock. One of these men, who called 
cherry-birds "port-royals," he long frequented, though looked 
on in the town as by no means sacred; who, having a preju- 
dice for beer, at times transcended propriety. "Surely," said 
Thoreau of him, "Goodwin is tenacious of life, — hard to 
scale." I never knew him to go by this class without the due 
conversation; but I observed that he had no tolerance for 
"loafers," bar-room idlers, and men who "have nothing to 
do." The fishermen and hunters he knew and enjoyed were 
experienced in birds and beasts and fishes, and from them he 
loved to draw their facts. They had a sort of Lidian or gypsy 
life, and he loved to get this life even at second hand. He 
had sufficient innocence for both sides in these interviews. 

He was a natural Stoic, not taught from Epictetus nor 
the trail of Indians. Not only made he no complaint, but in 
him was no background of complaint, as in some, where a 
lifelong tragedy dances in polished fetters. He enjoyed what 
sadness he could find. He would be as melancholy as he could 
and rejoice with fate. "Who knows but he is dead already?" 
He voyaged about his river in December, the drops freezing 
on the oar, with a cheering song; pleased with the silvery 

[11 ] 



THOREAU 

chime of icicles against the stems of the button-bushes, toys 
of "immortal water, alive even to the superficies." The blaze 
of July and the zero of January came to him as wholesome 
experiences, — -the gifts of Nature, as he deemed them. He 
desired to improve every opportunity, to find a good in each 
moment, not choosing alone the blissful. He said that he 
could not always eat his pound cake; while corn meal lasted 
he had resource against hunger, nor did he expect or wish 
for luxuries, and would have been glad of that Indian deli- 
cacy, acorn oil. "It was from out the shadow of his toil he 
looked into the light."" 

He was one of those who keep so much of the boy in them 
that he could never pass a berry without picking it. For 
huckleberries, wild strawberries, chestnuts, acorns, and wild 
apples he had a snatch of veneration almost superstitious. I 
being gifted with a lesser degree of this edible religion, fre- 
quently had to leave him in the rear, picking his berry, while 
I sat looking at the landscape, or admiring my berry-loving 
lad; nor was I less pleased to see him sometimes cutting off 
a square of birch-bark, out of which, in five minutes, he 
would construct a safe and handsome basket for his prize. 
The same simplicity and mechanical skill has often saved us 
from a severe drenching in those sudden thunder-storms so 
common to this climate. With his trusty knife (of which he 
always carried two, — one specially, with a short, strong, 
stubbed blade), before the shower could overhaul us, and in a 
very few minutes, he would make a very good shelter. Tak- 
ing the lower limbs of an oak for his rafters, and instantly 

[12] 



EARLY LIFE 

casting on a supply of long birches, with their butt-ends over 
the oak-boughs for cross-pieces, — over these must be thatched 
all the bushes and branches contiguous, thus keeping us 
absolutely dry in a deluge. He thought it could also be done 
by simply cutting a big strip of bark, with a hole for the 
"noddle." 

This mechanical skill was early developed, — so much so 
that it was even thought to have had him bound as an ap- 
prentice to a cabinet-maker. At the age of sixteen he built 
a boat for excursions on the river, and called it "The Rover." 
In his trip up the Merrimac (celebrated in "The Week"") the 
boat was built by himself and his brother John. This craft 
afterwards was used several years by Mr. Hawthorne, the 
author, and at last descended to me; thus showing that it 
had many salient points. At a later period sand-paper and 
pencils were his productions; at times he built fences, did 
whitewashing and papering, and besides building a house 
for himself, finished rooms in a barn for another. In land- 
surveying, which was also his special business, he availed 
himself of this "tool-using" talent, which Sartor Resartus 
celebrates. Not having the instrument he needed, costly and 
difficult for him to procure, he made it, — a rare thing for 
measure, and equal to the best that came from the shops. 
The story of his wood-measure he has told himself; on offer- 
ing which at the city hay-scales in Haymarket Square, Bos- 
ton, it was rejected on the score that it was too perfect for 
the interests of the seller of wood. 

At times, as he floated on the Concord, he seciired the 
[ 13] 



THOREAU 

little loose lumber he could find, sometimes brought down 
by the spring freshets. Needing some bookshelves (especially 
after the receipt in 1855, from Thomas Cholmondeley, of his 
rich Indian present of books), he contrived substantial and 
elegant cases for his books from some of this wood, so long 
the perch of turtles and the dining-table of clam-loving 
muskrats. Very neatly framed and varnished, with steel en- 
gravings adorning the ends, no better were possibly to be 
had of our village Vitruvius. A further need being that of a 
chest which should contain his manuscripts, become with years 
so numerous and valuable, he constructs one from this same 
driftwood, — an excellent chest. Again, not finding the un- 
ruled paper, or other, that he wanted for journals bound up 
in books, he purchased his paper and bound it for himself in 
convenient volumes of the right shape and size. 

A self-helping man, this skill grew out from the general en- 
dowment of his reasonable nature, by which he exercised good 
judgment in whatever he did. He simply applied his intel- 
lectual discernment to the work of his hands. In surveying for 
the farmers he constantly displayed this ability and foresight, 
and was better pleased to do their work well than quickly and 
cheaply. Respecting the measure of land he was excessively 
exact, and used the most expensive modes to calculate his 
areas, — delighting to furnish an exact plan of the lots. In 
time, the greater part of the farms in Concord got surveyed, 
and many planned; but this was not all. In more than one 
instance the boundaries were first found from old deeds, or 
traditions, by this surveyor, and then properly mapped and 

[14] 



EARLY LIFE 

monumented. The farmers liked him ; they were glad to have 
him come either on their farms or in their houses. 

Thoreau says that he knew he loved some things, and 
could ^all back on them; and that he "never chanced to meet 
with any man so cheering and elevating and encouraging, so 
infinitely suggestive, as the stillness and solitude of the Well- 
meadow field." His interest in swamps and bogs was familiar: 
it grew out of his love for the wild. He thought that he 
enjoyed himself in Go wing's Swamp, where the hairy huckle- 
berry grows, equal to a domain secured to him and reaching 
to the South Sea; and, for a moment, experienced there the 
same sensation as if he were alone in a bog in Rupert's Land, 
thus, also, saved the trouble of going there. The small cran- 
berries (not the common species) looked to him "just like 
some kind of swamp-sparrow's eggs in their nest; like jewels 
worn or set in those sphagnous breasts of the swamp, — 
swamp pearls we might call them." It was the bog in our 
brain and bowels, the primitive vigor of nature in us, that 
inspired that dream; for Ruperfs Land is recognized as 
surely by one sense as another. "Where was that strain 
mixed into which the world was dropped but as a lump of 
sugar to sweeten the draught? I would be drunk, drunk, 
drunk, — dead-drunk to this world with it for ever!" 

''Kings unborn shall walk with me; 
And the poor grass shall plot and plan 
What it will do when it is man." 

This tone of mind grew out of no insensibility; or, if he 
sometimes looked coldly on the suffering of more tender 

[15] 



THOREAU 

natures, he sympathized with their afflictions, but could 
do nothing to admire them. He would not injure a plant 
unnecessarily. And once meeting two scoundrels who had 
been rude to a young girl near Walden Pond, he took instant 
means for their arrest, and taught them not to repeat that 
offence. One who is greatly affected by the commission of an 
ignoble act cannot want sentiment. At the time of the John 
Brown tragedy, Thoreau was driven sick. So the country's ^'■ 
misfortunes in the Union war acted on his feelings with great 
force: he used to say he "could never recover while the war 
lasted." 

The high moral impulse never deserted him, and he re- 
solved early (1851) "to read no book, take no walk, under- 
take no enterprise, but such as he could endure to give an 1 
account of to himself; and live thus deliberately for the most !i 
part." In our estimate of his character, the moral qualities 
form the basis: for himself, rigidly enjoined; if in another, he 
could overlook delinquency. Truth before all things; in your 
daily life, integrity before all things; in all your thoughts, 
your faintest breath, the austerest purity, the utmost fulfil- 
ling of the interior law; faith in friends, and an iron and 
flinty pursuit of right, which nothing can tease or purchase 
out of us. If he made an engagement, he was certain to fulfil 
his part of the contract; and if the other contractor failed, 
then his rigor of opinion prevailed, and he never more dealt 
with that particular bankrupt. He agreed with Quarles: — 

''Merchants, arise 
And mingle conscience with your merchandise." 

[ 16] 



EARLY LIFE 

Thus, too, when an editor (J. R. Lowell) left out this sen- 
tence from one of his pieces, about the pine-tree, — "It is as 
immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, 
there to tower above me still," — Thoreau, having given no 
authority, considered the bounds of right were passed, and 
no more indulged in that editor. His opinion of publishers 
was not flattering. For several of his best papers he received 
nothing in cash, his pay coming in promises. When it was 
found that his writing was like to be popular, merchants 
were ready to run and pay for it. 

Soap-grease is not diamond; to use a saying of his, "Thank 
God, they cannot cut down the clouds.*" To the work of 
every man justice will be measured, after the individual is 
forgotten. So long as our plain country is admired, the books 
of our author should give pleasure, pictures as they are of 
the great natural features, illustrated faithfully with details 
of smaller beauties, and having the pleasant, nutty flavor of 
New England. The chief attraction of "The Week" and 
"Walden" to pure and aspiring natures consists in their 
lofty and practical morality. To live rightly, never to swerve, 
and to believe that we have in ourselves a drop of the Origi- 
nal Goodness besides the well-known deluge of original sin, 
— these strains sing through Thoreau's writings. Yet he 
seemed to some as the winter he once described, — "hard and 
bound-out like a bone thrown to a famishing dog." 

The intensity of his mind, like Dante's, conveyed the 
breathing of aloofness, — his eyes bent on the ground, his 
long, swinging gait, his hands perhaps clasped behind him 

[17] 



THOREAU 

or held closely at his side, the fingers made into a fist. Yet, 

like the lock-tender at Middlesex, "he was meditating some 

vast and sunny problem," or giving its date to a humble 

flower. He did, in one manner, live in himself, as the poet 

says,— 

"Be thy own palace, or the world's thy jail;" 

or as Antoninus, "Do but few things at a time, it has been 
said, if thou wouldst preserve thy peace." 

A pleasing trait of his warm feeling is remembered, when 
he asked his mother, before leaving college, what profession 
to choose, and she replied pleasantly, " You can buckle on 
your knapsack, and roam abroad to seek your fortune." The 
tears came in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, when his 
sister Helen, who was standing by, tenderly put her arm 
around him and kissed him, saying, "No, Henry, you shall 
not go : you shall stay at home and live with us." He also 
had the firmness of the Indian, and could repress his pathos; j 
as when he carried (about the age of ten) his pet chickens to 
an innkeeper for sale in a basket, who thereupon told him 
"^o stop^'' and for convenience' sake took them out one by 
one and wrung their several pretty necks before the poor 
boy's eyes, who did not budge. 

His habit of attending strictly to his own affairs appears 
from this, that being complained of for taking a knife be- 
longing to another boy, Henry said, "I did not take it," — 
and was believed. In a few days the culprit was found, and 
Henry then said, "I knew all the time who it was, and the 
day it was taken I went to Newton with father." "Well, 

[ 18] 



EARLY LIFE 

then," of course, was the question, "why did you not say so 
at the time?" "I did not take it," was his reply. This little 
anecdote is a key to many traits in his character, A school- 
fellow complained of him because he would not make him a 
bow and arrow, his skill at whittling being superior. It seems 
he refused, but it came out after that he had no knife. So, 
through life, he steadily declined trying or pretending to do 
what he had no means to execute, yet forbore explanations; 
and some have thought his refusals were unwillingness. When 
he had grown to an age suitable for company, and not very 
fond of visiting, he could not give the common refusal, — 
that it was not convenient, or not in his power, or he re- 
gretted, — but said the truth, — "I do not want to go." 

An early anecdote remains of his being told at three years 
that he must die, as well as the men in the. catechism. He 
said he did not want to die, but was reconciled; yet, coming 
in from coasting, he said he "did not want to die and go to 
heaven, because he could not carry his sled with him ; for the 
boys said, as it was not shod with iron, it was not worth a 
cent." This answer prophesied the future man, who never 
could, nor did, believe in a heaven to which he could not 
carry his views and principles, some of which, not shod with 
the vanity of this world, were pronounced worthless. In his 
later life, on being conversed with about leaving here as a 
finality, he replied that "he thought he should not go away 
from here." 

With his peculiarities, he did not fail to be set down by 
some as an original, — one of those who devise needlessly new 

[19 J 



THOREAU 

ways to think or act. His retreat from the domestic camp to 
picket duty at Walden gave rise to sinister criticism, and 
he was asked the common question while there, "What do 
you live here for?" as the man wished to know who lost his 
hound, but was so astonished at finding Henry in the woods, 
as quite to forget the stray dog. He had lost his hound, but 
he had found a man. As we learn from the verse, — 

"He that believes himself doth never lie/' 

so Thoreau lived a true life in having his own belief in it. 
We may profitably distinguish between that sham egotism 
which sets itself above all other values, and that loyal faith 
in our instincts on which all sincere living rests. His life was 
a healthy utterance, a free and vital progress, joyous and 
serene, and thus proving its value. If he passed by forms 
that others hold, it was because his time and means were in- 
vested elsewhere. To do one thing well, to persevere, and ac- 
complish one thing perfectly, was his faith; and he said that 
fame was sweet, "as the evidence that the effort was a success." 
Whether from his long and unwearied studies of the In- 
dian character, or from his own nature, he had a love for the 
fields and woods and wild creatures that never deserted him; 
and his last intelligible words were "moose" and "Indian." 
For the city he felt something like the camels and cam el - 
drivers who accompany English travellers across the Desert, 
but cannot be induced to enter or go near to Cairo. Many 
are the entries in his Journal of his visits to Cambridge, 
where he went to get his books from the College Library, 

[ 20] 



EARLY LIFE 

and to have a chat with his valued friend, the naturalist Dr. 
T. W. Harris, a former librarian; but it is only "To Cam- 
bridge and Boston." In Boston he also visited libraries, and 
the end of Long Wharf, having no other business there than 
with the books and that brief sight of the sea, so fascinating 
to a landsman. Thus he had no love at all for cities; those 
curious outcroppings of mortal ingenuity, called "institu- 
tions,*" furnished him more than one good mark to shoot at. 
"One wise sentence,"" he said, "is worth the State of Massa- 
chusetts many times over.*" 

Henry, from his childhood, had quite a peculiar interest 
in the place of his birth, — Concord. He lived nowhere else 
for any length of time, and Staten Island, or the White 
Hills, or New Bedford, seemed little to him contrasted with 
that. I think he loved Cape Cod. The phrase local associa- 
tions^ or the delightful word home, do not explain his absorb- 
ing love for a town with few picturesque attractions beside 
its river. Concord is mostly plain land, with a sandy soil; or, 
on the river, wide meadows, covered with wild grass, and apt 
to be flooded twice a year and changed to shallow ponds. 
The absence of striking scenery, unpleasing to the tourist, is 
an advantage to the naturalist: too much farming and gen- 
tlemen"'s estates are in his way. Concord contains an unusual 
extent of wood and meadow; and the wood-lots, when cut 
off", are usually continued for the same purpose. So it is a vil- 
lage surrounded by tracts of woodland and meadow, abound- 
ing in convenient yet retired paths for walking. 

No better place for his business. He enjoyed its use be- 

[21 ] 



THOREAU 

cause he found there his materials for work. Perhaps the 
river was his great blessing in the landscape. No better 
stream for boating in New England, — -"the sluggish artery 
of the Concord," as he names it. By this, he could go to 
other points; as a trip up the river rarely ended with the 
water, but the shore was sought for some special purpose, to 
examine an animal or a plant, or get a wider view, or collect 
some novelty or ci'op. The study of the river-plants never 
ended, and, like themselves, floated for ever with the sweet 
waves; the birds and insects peculiarly attracted to the 
shores, the fish and musquash, the sun and wind, were in- 
teresting. The first spring days smile softest on the river, 
and the fleet of withered leaves sailing down the stream in 
autumn give a stately finish to the commerce of the seasons. 

The hills, Anursnuc, Nashawtuc, Fairhaven, are not lofty. 
Yet they have sufficient outlook, and carry the eye to Mo- 
nadnoc and the Peterboro"' Hills, while nearer blue Wachu- 
sett stands alone. Thoreau visited more than once the prin- 
cipal mountains in his prospect. It was like looking off" on a 
series of old homes. He went in the choice August or Sep- 
tember days, and picked berries on Monadnoc's stony pla- 
teau, took his roomy walk over the Mason Hills, or explored 
the great Wachusett pasture, — the fairest sight eye ever saw. 

For daily talk, Fairhaven Hill anszaered very well. From 
this may be seen that inexhaustible expanse, Conantum, with 
its homely slopes; thence Blue Hill, Nobscot, the great elm 
of Weston, and Prospect Hill. From the hills, always the 
stream, the bridges, the meadows: the latter, when flowed, 

[ 22] 



I 



EARLY LIFE 

the finest place for ducks and gulls; whilst in their dry dress 
they furnish opportunities, from Copan down to Carlisle 
Bridge, or from Lee's Cliff to the causey in Wayland, for ex- 
ploration in the mines of natural history. As the life of a 
hunter furnishes an endless story of wood and field, though 
pursued alone, so Nature has this inevitable abundance to 
the naturalist; to the docile eye, a meadow-spring can fur- 
nish a tide of discourse. 

Three spacious tracts, uncultivated, where the patches of 
scrub-oak, wild apples, barberries, and other plants grew, 
which Thoreau admired, were Walden Woods, the Estabrook 
country, and the old Marlboro' road. A poem on the latter 
crops out of his strictures on "Walking.'" They represent the 
fact as botanists, naturalists, or walkers w^ould have it, — in a 
russet suit for field sports, not too much ploughed and fur- 
rowed out, with an eye looking to the sky. Thoreau said that 
his heaven was south or south-west, in the neighborhood of 
the old Marlboro' road. They have their ponds, choice fields 
or plants, in many cases carefully hid away. He was com- 
pelled to name places for himself, like all fresh explorers. 
His Utricularia Bay, Mount Misery, Cohosh Swamp, Blue 
Heron Rock, Pleasant Meadow, Scrub-oak Plain, denote lo- 
calities near Fairhaven Bay. He held to the old titles; thus, 
— the Holt (in Old English, a small, wooded tongue of land 
in a river). Beck Stow's Hole, Seven-star Lane, and the Price 
Road. He knew the woods as a poet and engineer, and 
studied their successions, the growth and age of each patch, 
from year to year, with the chiefs of our forest, the white-pine, 

[ 23] 



THOREAU 

the pitch-pine, and the oak. Single locaHties of plants occur: 
in Mason's pasture is, or was, a bayberry ; on Fairhaven Hill 
a patch of yew. Some warm side-hills afford a natural green- 
house. Thus Lee's Cliff, on Fairhaven Pond, shelters early 
cress and tower mustard, as well as pewees. If the poefs 
faculty be naming, he can find applications for it in the 
country. Thoreau had his Thrush Alley and Stachys Shore. 

A notice of him would be incomplete which did not refer 
to his fine social qualities. He served his friends sincerely and 
practically. In his own home he was one of those characters 
who may be called household treasures: always on the spot 
with skilful eye and hand to raise the best melons in the 
garden, plant the orchard with the choicest trees, or act as 
extempore mechanic; fond of the pets, the sisters flowers, or 
sacred Tabby. Kittens were his favorites, — he would play with 
them by the half-hour. Some have fancied because he moved 
to Walden he left his family. He bivouacked there, and really 
lived at home, where he went every day. 

It is needless to dwell on the genial and hospitable enter- 
tainer he always was. His readers came many miles to see him, 
attracted by his writings. Those who could not come sent 
their letters. Those who came when they could no more see 
him, as strangers on a pilgrimage, seemed as if they had been 
his intimates, so warm and cordial was the sympathy they 
received from his letters. If he did the duties that lay near- 
est and satisfied those in his immediate circle, certainly he 
did a good work; and whatever the impressions from the 
theoretical part of his writings, when the matter is probed to 

[ 24] 



EARLY LIFE 

the bottom, good sense and good feeling will be detected in 
it. A great comfort in him, he was eminently reliable. No 
whim of coldness, no absorption of his time by public or pri- 
vate business, deprived those to whom he belonged of his 
kindness and affection. He was at the mercy of no caprice: 
of a firm will and uncompromising sternness in his moral 
nature, he carried the same qualities into his relation with 
others, and gave them the best he had, without stint. He 
loved firmly, acted up to his love, was a believer in it, took 
pleasure and satisfaction in abiding by it. As Rev. James 
Froysell says of Sir Robert Harley, the grandfather of roper's 
Harley, — "My language is not a match for his excellent vir- 
tues ; his spirituall lineaments and beauties are above my pen- 
cil. I want art to draw his picture. I know he had his human- 
ities. . . . He was a friend to God's friends. They that did 
love God had his love. God's people were his darlings; they 
had the cream of his affection. If any poor Christian were 
crushed by malice or wrong, whither would they fly but to 
Sir Robert Harley .?"i 

1 Sir Robert was husband of Lady Brilliana Harley, cited in Channing's 
preface, who was the daughter of Edward, Viscount Conway, Governor 
of the Brill in Holland when she was born there ; hence her odd name. 
She defended Brampton Hall vahantly against the Cavaliers in 1643, but 
died soon after; her husband died in 1656, aged seventy-seven. The pas- 
sage quoted is from his funeral sermon preached December 10, 1656, by 
Rev. James Froysell, as Collins calls him in his "Peerage" (IV. 245); it 
was published and dedicated to Colonel Edward Harley, Oxford's father. 
A son of Sir Robert, Nathaniel Harley, was a Levant merchant in Asia. 



[25] 



MANNERS 



'Since they can only judge, who can confer." 

Ben "Johnson" 

(so Ben spelt his name). 



CHAPTER II 

MANNERS 

We hear complaint that he set up for a reformer; and what 
capital, then, had he to embark in that line? How was it he 
knew so much more than the rest, as to correct abuses, to 
make over church and state? He had no reform theories, but 
used his opinions in literature for the benefit of man and the 
glory of God. Advice he did not give. His exhortations to 
young students and poor Christians who desired to know his 
economy never meant to exclude the reasonable charities. 
Critics have eagerly rushed to make this modest citizen and 
"home-body" one of the travelling conversational Shy locks, 
who seek their pound of flesh in swallowing humanity, each 
the special savior on his own responsibility. As he says of 
some reformers, "They addressed each other continually by 
their Christian names, and rubbed you continually with the 
greasy cheek of their kindness. They would not keep their 
distance, but cuddle up and lie spoon-fashion with you, no 
matter how hot the weather or how narrow the bed. ... It 
was difficult to keep clear of the slimy benignity with which 
H. C. Wright sought to cover you, before he took you fairly 
into his bowels. He addressed me as Henry, within one min- 
ute from the time I first laid eyes on him ; and when I spoke, 
he said, with drawling, sultry sympathy: 'Henry, I know all 
you would say, I understand you perfectly: you need not ex- 
plain anything to me.""' Neither did he belong to the "Mutual 

[29] 



THOREAU 

Admiration"" society, where the dunce passes for gold by rub- 
bing his fractional currency on pure metal. His was not an 
admiring character. 

The opinion of some of his readers and lovers has been 
that, in his "Week," the best is the discourse of Friend- 
ship. It is certainly a good specimen of his peculiar style, 
but it should never be forgot that the treatment is poetical 
and romantic. No writer more demands that his reader, his 
critic, should look at his writing as a work of art. Because 
Michel Angelo painted the Last Judgment, we do not accuse 
him of being a j udge : he is working as artist. So our author, 
in his writing on Friendship, treats the topic in a too distant 
fashion. Some might call it a lampoon: others say, "Why! 
this watery, moonlit glance and glimpse contains no more 
of the flesh and blood of friendship than so much lay-figure; 
if this was all the writer knew of Friendship, he had better 
have sheared off" and let this craft go free." When he says, 
"One goes forth prepared to say 'Sweet friends!' and the 
salutation is, 'Damn your eyes!'" — to read this literally 
would be to accuse him of stupidity. The meaning is plain: 
he was romancing with his subject, playing a strain on his 
theorbo like the bobolink. 

The living, actual friendship and affection which makes 
time a reality, no one knew better. He gossips of a high, 
imaginary world, giving a glance of that to the inhabitants, 
of this world; bringing a few mother-of-pearl tints from the 
skies to refresh us in our native place. He did not wish for a] 
set of cheap friends to eat up his time; was rich enough to go! 

[ 30] 



MANNERS 

without a train of poor relations, — the menagerie of dunces 
with open mouths. In the best and practical sense, no one had 
more friends or was better loved. He drew near him simple, 
unlettered Christians, who had questions they wished to dis- 
cuss; for, though nothing was less to his mind than chopped 
logic, he was ready to accommodate those who differed from 
him with his opinion; and never too much convinced by op- 
position. To those in need of information — to the farmer- 
botanist naming the new flower, the boy with his puzzle of 
birds or roads, or the young woman seeking for books — he 
was always ready to give what he had. 

Literally, his views of friendship were high and noble. 
Those who loved him never had the least reason to regret it. 
He made no useless professions, never asked one of those 
questions which destroy all relation; but he was on the spot 
at the time, and had so much of human life in his keeping, 
to the last, that he could spare a breathing place for a friend. 
When I said that a change had come over the dream of life, 
and that solitude began to peer out curiously from the dells 
and wood-roads, he whispered, with his foot on the step of the 
other world, "It is better some things should end." Having 
this unfaltering faith, and looking thus on life and death 
(after which, the poet Chapman says, a man has nothing to 
fear), let it be said for ever that there was no affectation or 
hesitancy in his dealing with his friends. He meant friendship, 
and meant nothing else, and stood by it without the slightest 
abatement; not veering as a weathercock with each shift of a 
friend's fortune, or like those who bury their early friendships 

[31 ] 



THOREAU 

in order to gain room for fresh corpses. If he was of a Spar- 
tan mould, in a manner austere, if his fortune was not vast, 
and his learning somewhat special, he yet had what is better, 
— the old Roman belief which confided there was more in this 
life than applause and the best seat at the dinner- table: to 
have a moment to spare to thought and imagination, and to 
the res rusticce and those who need you; 

"That hath no side at all 
But of himself." 

A pleasant account of this easy assimilation is given in his 
visit to Canton, where in his Sophomore year (1834-35) he 
kept a school of seventy pupils, and where he was consigned 
to the care of Rev. O. A. Brownson, then a Unitarian clergy- 
man, for examination. The two sat up talking till midnight, 
and Mr. Brownson informed the School Committee that Mr. 
Thoreau was examined, and would do, and would board with 
him. So they struck heartily to studying German, and getting 
all they could of the time together, like old friends. Another 
early experience was the town school in Concord, which he 
took after leaving college, announcing that he should not 
flog, but would talk morals as a punishment instead. A fort- 
night sped glibly along, when a knowing deacon, one of the 
School Committee, walked in and told Mr, Thoreau that he 
must flog and use the ferule, or the school would spoil. So he 
did, — feruling six of his pupils after school, one of whom was 
the maid-servant in his own house. But it did not suit well 
with his conscience, and he reported to the committee that 

[ 32 ] 



MANNERS 

he should no longer keep their school, if they interfered with 
his arrangements; and they could keep it. 

A moment may be spent on a few traits of Thoreau, of the 
personal kind. In height, he was about the average; in his 
build, spare, with limbs that were rather longer than usual, 
or of which he made a longer use. His face, once seen, could 
not be forgotten. The features were marked: the nose aqui- 
line or very Roman, like one of the portraits of Caesar (more 
like a beak, as was said); large, overhanging brows above the 
deepest set blue eyes that could be seen, — blue in certain 
lights, and in others gray, — eyes expressive of all shades of 
feeling, but never weak or near-sighted; the forehead not un- 
usually broad or high, full of concentrated energy and pur- 
pose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with mean- 
ing and thought when silent, and giving out, when open, a 
stream of the most varied and unusual and instructive say- 
ings. His hair was a dark brown, exceedingly abundant, fine 
and soft; and for several years he wore a comely beard. His 
whole figure had an active earnestness, as if he had no mo- 
ment to waste. The clenched hand betokened purpose. In 
walking, he made a short cut if he could, and when sitting 
in the shade or by the wall-side, seemed merely the clearer 
to look forward into the next piece of activity. Even in the 
boat he had a wary, transitory air, his eyes on the outlook, 
— perhaps there might be ducks, or the Blanding turtle, or 
an otter or sparrow. 

He was a plain man in his features and dress, one who 
could not be mistaken. This kind of plainness is not out of 

[33] 



THOREAU 

keeping with beauty. He sometimes went as far as homeliness ; 
which again, even if there be a prejudice against it, shines 
out at times beyond a vulgar sense. Thus, he alludes to those 
who pass the night on a steamer^'s deck, and see the moun- 
tains in moonlight; and he did this himself once on the Hud- 
son, at the prow, when, after a "hem"''' or two, the passenger : 
who stood next inquired in good faith: "Come, now, can't ye 
lend me a chaw o' baccy?" He looked like a shipmate. It was 
on another Albany steamboat that he walked the deck hun- 
grily, among the fine gentlemen and ladies, eating upon a 
half-loaf of bread, his dinner for the day, and very late. A 
plain man could do this heartily: in an ornamental, scented 
thing it looks affected. 

That was before the pedestrian disease. In that, once, as he 
came late into a town devoid of a tavern, on going to the 
best-looking house in the place for a bed, he got one in the 
entry, within range of the family, his speech and manners be- 
ing those of polite society. In some of our retired towns there 
are traditions of lodgers who arise before light and depart 
with the feather bed, or the origin of feathers in the hencoop. 
Once walking in old Dunstable, he much desired the town 
history by C. J. Fox of Nashua; and, knocking, as usual, at 
the best house, he went in and asked a young lady who made 
her appearance whether she had the book in question. She 
had, — it was produced. After consulting it, Thoreau in his 
sincere way inquired very modestly whether she "would not 
sell it to him."" I think the plan surprised her, and have heard 
that she smiled ; but he produced his wallet, gave her the pis- 

[34 ] 



MANNERS 

tareen, and went his way rejoicing with the book, which re- 
mained in his small library. 

He did his stint of walking on Cape Cod, where a stranger 
attracts a partial share of criticism, and "looked despairingly 
at the sandy village whose street he must run the gauntlet 
of; there only by sufferance, and feeling as strange as if he 
were in a town in China." One of the old Cod could not be- 
lieve that Thoreau was not a pedler; but said, after expla- 
nations failed, "Well, it makes no odds what else it is you 
carry, so long as you carry truth along with you.*" One of 
those idiots who may be found in some Cape Cod houses, 
grim and silent, one night mumbled he would get his gun, 
"and shoot that damned pedler."" And, indeed, he might have 
followed in the wake of a spectacle pedler who started from 
the inn of Meg Dods in Wellfleet, the same morning, both of 
them looking after and selling spectacles. He once appeared 
in the mist, in a remote part of the Cape, with a bird tied to 
the top of his umbrella, which he shouldered like a gun : the 
inhabitants of the first cottage set the traveller down for a 
"crazy fellow." At Orleans he was comforted by two Italian 
organ-boys who had ground their harmonies from Province- 
town, for twoscore miles in the sand, fresh and gay. He once 
stopped at a hedge-tavern where a large white bull-dog was 
kept in the entry: on asking the bar-tender what Cerberus 
would do to an early riser, he replied, "Do? — why, he would 
tear out the substance of your pantaloons." This was a good 
notice not to quit the premises without meeting the rent. 

Whatever was suitable he did : as lecturing in the basement 
[35] 



THOREAU 

of an Orthodox church in Amherst, New Hampshire, when 
he hoped facetiously he "contributed something to upheave 
and demolish the structure."" He once lectured in a Boston 
reading-room, the subscribers sniffing their chloroform of 
journals, not awoke by the lecture. A simple person can thus 
find easy paths. In the course of his travels, he sometimes 
met with a character that inspired him to describe it. He 
drew this Flemish sketch of a citizen of New York. 

"Getting into Patchogue late one night, there was a 
drunken Dutchman on board, whose wit reminded me of 
Shakespeare. When we came to leave the beach our boat was 
aground, and we were detained waiting for the tide. In the 
mean while, two of the fishermen took an extra dram at the 
Beach House. Then they stretched themselves on the seaweed 
by the shore in the sun, to sleep off the effects of their de- 
bauch. One was an inconceivably broad-faced young Dutch- 
man, but oh! of such a peculiar breadth and heavy look, I 
should not know whether to call it more ridiculous or sub- 
lime. You would say that he had humbled himself so much 
that he was beginning to be exalted. An indescribable Myn- 
heerish stupidity. I was less disgusted by their filthiness and 
vulgarity, because I was compelled to look on them as ani- 
mals, as swine in their stye. For the whole voyage they lay 
flat on their backs in the bottom of the boat, in the bilge- 
water, and wet with each bailing, half-insensible and wallow- 
ing in their filth. But ever and anon, when aroused by the 
rude kicks of the skipper, the Dutchman, who never lost his 
wits nor equanimity, though snoring and rolling in the reek 

[36] 



MANNERS 

produced by his debauch, blurted forth some happy repartee 
hke an illuminated swine. It was the earthliest, slimiest wit I 
ever heard. 

" The countenance was one of a million. It was unmistakable 
Dutch. In the midst of a million faces of other races it could 
not be mistaken. It told of Amsterdam. I kept racking my 
brains to conceive how he had been born in America, how 
lonely he must feel, what he did for fellowship. When we were 
groping up the narrow creek of Patchogue at ten o'clock at 
night, keeping our boat now from this bank, now from that, 
with a pole, the two inebriates roused themselves betimes. 
For in spite of their low estate they seemed to have all their 
wits as much about them as ever, ay, and all the self-respect 
they ever had. And the Dutchman gave wise directions to 
the steerer, which were not heeded (told where eels were 
plenty, in the dark, etc.). At last he suddenly stepped on to 
another boat which was moored to the shore, with a divine 
ease and sureness, saying, 'Well, good-night, take care of 
yourselves, I can't be with you any longer.' He was one of 
the few remarkable men I have met. I have been inspired by 
one or two men in their cups. There was really a divinity 
stirred within them, so that in their case I have reverenced 
the drunken, as savages do the insane man. So stupid that he 
could never be intoxicated; when I said, 'You have had a 
hard time of it to-day,' he answered with indescribable good- 
humor out of the very midst of his debauch, with watery eyes, 
'It doesn't happen every day.' It was happening then." 

With these plain ways, no person was usually easier mis- 
[37] 



THOREAU 

applied by the cultivated class than Thoreau, Some of those 
afflicted about him have started with the falsetto of a void 
estimate on his life, his manners, sentiments, and all that in 
him was. His two books, "Walden" and the "Week," are so 
excellent and generally read, that a commendation of their 
easy, graceful, yet vigorous style and matter is superfluous. 
Singular traits run through his writing. His sentences will 
bear study; meanings appear not detected at the first glance, 
subtle hints which the writer himself may not have foreseen. 
It is a good English style, growing out of choice reading 
and familiarity with the classic writers, with the originality 
adding a piquant humor, and unstudied felicities of diction. 
He was not in the least degree an imitator of any writer, old 
or new, and with little of his times or their opinions in his 
books. 

Never eager, with a pensive hesitancy he steps about his 
native fields, singing the praises of music and spring and 
morning, forgetful of himself. No matter where he might 
have lived, or in what circumstance, he would have been a 
writer: he was made for this by all his tendencies of mind 
and temperament; a writer because a thinker, and even a 
philosopher, a lover of wisdom. No bribe could have drawn 
him from his native fields, where his ambition was — a very J 
honorable one — to fairly represent himself in his works, ac- 
complishing as perfectly as lay in his power what he con- 
ceived his business. More society would have impaired his de- 
signs; and a story from a fisher or hunter was better to him 
than an evening of triviality in shining parlors where he was 

[38] 



MANNERS 

misunderstood. His eye and ear and hand fitted in with the 
special task he undertook, — certainly as manifest a destiny 
as any man's ever was. The best test of the worth of charac- 
ter, — whether the person lived a contented, joyous life, filled 
his hours agreeably, was useful in his way, and on the whole 
achieved his purposes, — this he possessed. 

The excellence of his books and style is identical with the 
excellence of his private life. He wished to write living books 
that spoke of out-of-door things, as if written by an out- 
of-door man; and thinks his "AVeek" had that hypcethral 
character he hoped for. In this he was an artist. The impres- 
sion of the "Week" and "Walden" is single, as of a living 
product, a perfectly jointed building; yet no more composite 
productions could be cited. The same applies to the lectures 
on "Wild Apples'" or "Autumnal Tints," which possess this 
unity of treatment; yet the materials were drawn from the 
utmost variety of resources, observations made years apart, so 
skilfully woven as to appear a seamless garment of thought. 
This constructive, combining talent belongs with his adapt- 
edness to the pursuit. Other gifts were subsidiary to his lit- 
erary gift. He observed nature; but who would have known 
or heard of that except through his literary effort.? He ob- 
served nature, yet not for the sake of nature, but of man; 
and says, "If it is possible to conceive of an event outside to 
humanity, it is not of the slightest importance, though it 
were the explosion of the planet." 

Success is his rule. He had practised a variety of arts with 
many tools. Both he and his father were ingenious persons 

[39] 



THOREAU 

(the latter a pencil -maker) and fond of experimenting. To 
show the excellence of their work, they resolved to make as 
good a pencil out of plumbago paste as those sawed from 
black lead in London. The result was accomplished and the 
certificate obtained, Thoreau himself claiming a good share 
of the success, as he found the means to cut the plates. After 
his father's death in 1859, he carried on the pencil and 
plumbago business; had his own mill, and used the same 
punctuality and prudence in these affairs as had ever distin- 
guished him. 

In one or two of his later articles, expressions crept in 
which might lead the reader to suspect him of moroseness, or 
that his old trade of schoolmaster stuck to him. He rubbed 
out as perfectly as he could the more humorous part of those 
articles, originally a relief to their sterner features, and said, 
to me, "I cannot bear the levity I find." To which I replied, 
that it was hoped he would spare them, even to the puns, 
which he sometimes indulged. When a farmer drove up with 
a strange pair of long-tailed ponies, his companion asked 
whether such a person would not carry a Coifs revolver to 
protect him in the solitude? Thoreau replied that "he did 
not know about that, but he saw he had a pair of revolv- 
ing colts before him."" A lady once asked whether he ever 
laughed. She was well acquainted with him halfway, but did 
not see him, unless as a visitor; and he never became versed 
in making formal visits, nor had much success with first 
acquaintance. As to his laughing, no one did that more or 
better. One was surprised to see him dance, — he had been 

[40] 



MANNERS 

well taught, and was a vigorous dancer; and any one who 
ever heard him sing "Tom Bowline" will agree that, in tune 
and in tone, he answered, and went far beyond, all expecta- 
tion. His favorite songs were Mrs. Hemans's "Pilgrim Fa- 
thers," Moore's "Evening Bells'" and "Canadian Boat Song," 
and Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore," — precisely the 
most tender and popular songs. And oh, how sweetly he 
played upon his flute ! Not unfrequently he sang that brave 
catch of Izaak Walton's, — 

''In the morning when we rise. 
Take a cup to wash our eyes," — 

his cup being cold water. The Indians loved to drink at run- 
ning brooks which were warm, but he loved ice-cold water. 
Summer or winter he drank very little, and would sometimes 
try to recollect when he drank last. 

Before he set out on a foot journey, he collected every in- 
formation as to the routes and the place to which he was 
going, through the maps and guide-books. For Massachusetts 
he had the large State map divided in portions convenient, 
and carried in a cover such parts as he wanted: he deemed 
this map, for his purposes, excellent. Once he made for him- 
self a knapsack, with partitions for his books and papers, — 
india-rubber cloth, strong and large and spaced (the com- 
mon knapsacks being unspaced). The partitions were made 
of stout book -paper. His route being known, he made a list 
of all he should carry, — the sewing materials never forgotten 
(as he was a vigorous walker, and did not stick at a hedge 

[41 ] 



THOREAU 

more than an English racer), the pounds of bread, the sugar, 
salt, and tea carefully decided on. After trying the merit 
of cocoa, coffee, water, and the like, tea was put down as 
the felicity of a walking ^Hravail^'' — tea plenty, strong, with 
enough sugar, made in a tin pint cup; thus it may be said 
the walker will be refreshed and grow intimate with tea- 
leaves. With him the botany must go too, and the book for 
pressing flowers (an old "Primo Flauto"" of his father's), and 
the guide-book, spy-glass, and measuring-tape. Every one 
who has carried a pack up a mountain knows how every 
fresh ounce tells. He would run up the steepest place as 
swiftly as if he were on smooth land, and his breath never 
failed. He commended every party to carry "a junk of heavy 
cake" with plums in it, having found by long experience that 
after toil it was a capital refreshment. 

He made three journeys into the Maine wilderness, two 
from Moosehead Lake in canoes, accompanied by Indians, 
another to Katahdin Mountain. These taught him the art 
of camping out; and he could construct in a short time a 
convenient camp sufficient for permanent occupancy. His 
last excursion of this kind was to Monadnoc Mountain in 
August, 1859. He spent five nights in camp with me, having 
built two huts to get varied views. On a walk like this he 
always carried his umbrella; and on this Monadnoc trip, 
when about one mile from the station, a torrent of rain came 
down, the day being previously fine. Without his well-used 
umbrella his books, blankets, maps, and provisions would all 
have been spoiled, or the morning lost by delay. On the 

[42] 



MANNERS 

mountain, the first plateau being reached perhaps at about 
3 P.M., in a thick, rather soaking fog, the first object was to 
camp and make tea. Flowers, birds, lichens, and the rocks 
were carefully examined, all parts of the mountain visited, 
and as accurate a map as could be made by pocket-compass 
carefully sketched and drawn out, in the five days spent 
there ; with notes of the striking aerial phenomena, inci- 
dents of travel and natural history. Doubtless he directed 
such work with a view to writing on this and other moun- 
tains, and his collections were of course in his mind. Yet all 
this was incidental to the excursion itself, the other things 
collateral. 

The capital in use was the opportunity of the wild, free 
life, the open air, the new and strange sounds by night and 
day, the odd and bewildering rocks, among which a person 
can be lost within a rod of camp; the strange cries of visitors 
to the summit; the gi-eat valley over to Wachusett, with its 
thunder-storms and battles in the cloud (to look at, not fear); 
the farmers' back -yards in JafFrey, where the family cotton 
can be seen bleaching on the grass, but no trace of the 
pygmy family; the rip of night-hawks after twilight, putting 
up dor-bugs, and the dry, soft air all the night; the lack of 
dew in the morning; the want of water, a pint being a good 
deal, — these and similar things make up some part of such 
an excursion. It is all different from anything else, and 
would be so if you went a hundred times. The fatigue, the 
blazing sun, the face getting -broiled, the pint cup never 
scoured, shaving unutterable; your stockings dreary, having 

[43] 



THOREAU 

taken to peat, — not all the books in the world, as Sancho 
says, could contain the adventures of a week in camping. 

A friendly coincidence happened on his last excursion 
(July, 1858), to the White Mountains. Two of his friends, 
Harrison Blake and Theo. Brown, thought they might 
chance upon him there; and, though he dreamed little of 
seeing them, he left a note at the Mountain House which 
said where he was going, and told them if they looked "they 
would see the smoke of his fire." This came to be true, the 
brush taking the flame, and a smoke rising to be seen over 
all the valley. Meantime, Thoreau, in leaping from one 
mossy rock to another (after nearly sliding down the snow- 
crust on the side of Tuckerman"'s Ravine, but saved by dig- 
ging his nails into the snow), had fallen and severely sprained 
his foot. Before this, he had found the Arnica mollis, a plant 
famous for its healing properties; but he preferred the ice- 
cold water of the mountain stream, into which he boldly 
plunged his tortured limb to reduce the swelling; had the 
tent spread, and then, the rain beginning to come down, 
there came his two friends down the mountain as well, their 
outer integuments decimated with their tramp in the scrub. 
They had seen the smoke; and here they were in his little 
tent made for two, the rain falling all the while, and five 
. full-grown men to be packed in for five days and nights. 
Thoreau was unable to move on, but he sat and entertainec 
them heartily. 

He admired the rose-colored linnaeas lining the side of th€ 
narrow horse-track through the fir-scrub, and the leopard-j 

[ 44 ] 



MANNERS 

spotted land below the mountains. He had seen the pines in 
Fitzwilliam in a primeval wood-lot, and "their singular 
beauty made such an impression that I was forced to turn 
aside and contemplate them. They were so round and per- 
pendicular that my eyes slid off." The rose-breasted gros- 
beaks sang in a wonderful strain on Mount Lafayette. He 
ascended such hills as Monadnoc or Saddle-back Mountain 
by his own path; would lay down his map on the summit 
and draw a line to the point he proposed to visit below (per- 
haps forty miles away in the landscape), and set off bravely 
to make the short-cut. The lowland people wondered to see 
him scaling the heights as if he had lost his way, or at his 
"jumping over their cow-yard fences," asking if he had fallen 
from the clouds. 



[45] 



READING 



"'I know not' is one word; 'I know' is ten words." 

Chinese Proverb. 



CHA^PTER III 

READING 

Thoreau considered his profession to be literature, and his 
business the building up of books out of the right material, 
— books which should impress the reader as being alive. As 
he loved not dead birds, so neither loved he dead books; he 
had no care for scattered fragments of literature. His aim was 
to bring his life into the shape of good and substantial lit- 
erary expression; and to this end he armed himself with all 
the aids and appliances usual to literature. A good and suf- 
ficient academic and college training had made him a Latin 
and Greek scholar, with good knowledge of French, and some 
acquaintance with Italian, Spanish, and German. Allusion 
has been made to his faithful reading of English poetry at 
Harvard College, where he graduated in 1837. Besides what 
are usually called the "old English poets," such as Chaucer, 
even such stout backlogs as Davenant's "Gondibert" did not 
discourage him, a sagacious and resolute reader. If there was 
the one good line, he took it. In New York in 1843, while 
residing in the family of Mr. William Emerson, he extended 
these English and Scotch readings at the great libraries. He 
neglected no culture, left nothing undone that could aid him 
in the preparation of his first books, the "Week" and "Wal- 
den." That he was familiar with the classics, and kept up the 
acquaintance, is shown by his translations from Homer, JEs- 
chylus, Pindar, Anacreon, Aristotle, Pliny, Cato, Columella, 

[49] 



THOREAU 

and other ancient authors. His "Prometheus Bound," since in- 
cluded in his posthumous "Miscellanies," is said to have been 
reprinted and used as a "pony" at Harvard College; his ver- 
sion of the "Seven against Thebes" may have disappeared. 
Homer and Virgil were his favorites, like the world's ; in Eng- 
lish, Chaucer, Milton, Ossian, the Robin Hood Ballads; the 
"Lycidas," never out of his mind, for he had the habit, more 
than usual among scholars, of thinking in the language of 
another, in an unstudied way. 

Of his favorites, he has written a pleasant account in his 
"Week," But he used these and all literature as aids, and did 
not stop in a book; rarely or never read them over. His read- 
ing was done with a pen in his hand : he made what he calls 
"Fact-books," — citations which concerned his studies. He 
had no favorite among modern writers save Carlyle. Stories, 
novels (excepting the History of Froissart and the grand old 
Pelion on Ossa of the Hindoo Mythology), he did not read. 
His East Indian studies never went deep, technically: into 
the philological discussion as to whether ab, ab, is Sanscrit, 
or "what is Om?" he entered not. But no one relished the 
Bhagvat Geeta better, or the good sentences from the Vishnu 
Purana. He loved the Laws of Menu, the Vishnu Sarma, Saadi, 
and similar books. After he had ceased to read these works, 
he received a collection of them as a present, from his Eng- 
lish friend Cholmondeley in 1855. Plato and Montaigne and 
Goethe were all too slow for him: the hobbies he rode dealt 
with realities, not shadows, and he philosophized ab initio. 
Metaphysics was his aversion. He believed and lived in his 

[50] 



READING 

senses loftily. Speculations on the special faculties of the mind, 
or whether the Not Me comes out of the "I," or the All out 
of the infinite Nothing, he could not entertain. Like the 
Queen of Prussia, he had heard of les infiniments petits. In his 
way, he was a great reader and eagerly perused books of ad- 
venture, travel, or fact; and never could frame a dearer wish 
than spending the winter at the North pole: "could eat a 
fried rat with a relish," if opportunity commanded. 

The "Week" is a mine of quotations from good authors, 
the proof of careful reading and right selection. Such knotty 
writers as Quarles and Donne here find a place in lines as 
fresh and sententious as the fleetest wits. Here we have the 
best lines from many of the most remarkable English writers, 
and all the best lines from many not as remarkable, or who 
only exist by virtue of such spare passages. Many authors 
have only their one line of merit; and many more are want- 
ing even in this. Giles and Phineas Fletcher contain but a 
small portion of glory in all their high-sounding verse; yet 
the former afforded him that great passage from his "Christ's 
Victory and Triumph" beginning, — 

" How may a worm that crawls along the dust 
Clamber the azure mountains, thrown so high?" 

as well as that, — 

''And now the taller sons whom Titan warms 
Of unshorn mountains, blown with easy winds. 

Dandle the Morning's childhood in their arms, 
And if they chanced to slip the prouder pines, 

[51 ] 



THOREAU 

The under corylets did catch the shines 
To gild their leaves." 

From Phineas Fletcher's "Purple Island" he brings a splen- 
did tribute to the Muses, — 

'^By them went Fido marshal of the field, 

Weak was his mother when she gave him day," etc. 

Two stanzas not excelled in Milton or in Shakespeare. And 
what can be more subtle than these lines from Quarles's "Di- 
vine Fancies".? 

''He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief. 
Because he wants it, hath a true belief; 
And he that grieves because his grief's so small. 
Has a true grief, and the best Faith of all." 

''The laws of Nature break the rules of art." 

Then, Samuel Daniel, another example of admirable Eng- 
lish, he had read well; and his "Musophilus" "containing a 
general defence of learning" was a favorite, addressed as it 
was "to the Right Worthy and Judicious Favourer of Virtue 
Mr. Fulke Greville" — a patron after Thoreau's own heart, 
and whom he would have been only too glad to have met. 
This fine stanza is from that poem, — 

"Men find that action is another thing 

From what they in discoursing papers read: 
The world's affairs require in managing 

More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed." 

I quote this stanza and others as a better expression of Tho- 
reau's opinion on men and things, as collected and approved 

[ 52] 



READING 

by himself, than I could find elsewhere. And this, too, is from 
Daniel, — his "Epistle to the Lady Margaret, Countess of 
Cumberland," — 

" Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man! " 

Which perhaps was the most frequent verse he repeated. This 
is followed in the common-place book, by that opinion fi'om 
Quarles (his "Emblems,"" Book IV. 11) which represents the 
result of many queries: — 

**I asked the Schoolman; his advice was free, 
But scored me out too intricate a way." 

Quarles was always a favorite of Thoreau; he relished the 
following lines : — 

" Be wisely worldly^ but not worldly wise." 

"The ill that's wisely feared is half withstood." 

" An unrequested star did gently slide 

Before the wise men to a greater light." 

" Lord, if my cards be bad yet grant me skill 
To play them wisely, and make the best of ill." 

The astonishing Dean of St. Paul's, the learned Dr. Donne, 
was another poet whom he treated with. From him comes 
this in the "Week,"— 

''Although we with celestial bodies move 
Above the earth, — the earth we till and love." 

And also, — 

[53] 



THOREAU 

"Why Love among the virtues is not known. 
Is, that Love is them all, contract in one." 

Elsewhere he took from this cabalistical poet, — 

"Who are a little wise, the best fools be." 

" Only he who knows 
Himself, knows more." 

He might also, in alluding (if he had chosen to do so) to 
his prevailing magnanimity, have used this sententious verse 
of Donne: — 

"For me (if there be such a thing as I), 

Fortune (if there be such a thing as she), 
Spies that I bear so well her tyranny. 

That she thinks nothing else so fit for me." 

Here is one of Thoreau''s early favorites, who copied it so 
far back as 1837: — 

"O, how feeble is man's power! 

That, if good fortune fall. 
Cannot add another hour. 

Nor a lost hour recall ; 
But come bad chance. 

And we add to 't our strength, 

And we teach it art and length, 
Itself o'er us t' advance." 

In Charles Cotton, the friend of Izaak Walton, he found two 
or three bits which pleased him; one of them in the "Week" 
gave him a motto for "Morning." 

^*And round about 'Good morrows' fly. 
As if Day taught humanity." 

[54] 



READING 

Which is capital morals. But another motto for "Evening"" is 
equally fortunate in its descriptive rarity: — 

"A very little, little flock 
Shades half the ground that it would stock, 
Whilst the small stripling following them 
Appears a mighty Polypheme." 

Virgil would have appreciated this {Etjam summa procul, 
etc.) and Turner the painter should have had it. And though 
Ruskin, his critic, has fallen on Scott and Tennyson for pic- 
turesque description, Turner never found anything better 
than this in the landscape department. Cotton also afforded 
the fine definition of Contentment, — 

''Thou bravest soul's terrestrial Paradise." 

Another of his favorites was Michael Drayton, who wrote 
something about the English rivers; but his Sonnets and 
other pieces are (many of them) in the best Shakespeare style. 
He refers to Drayton's Elegy, "To my dearly beloved friend, 
Henry Reynolds, — of Poets and Poesy," where he says: — 

''Next Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs. 
Had in him those brave translunary things 
That your first poets had: his raptures were 
All air and fire, which made his verses clear ; 
For that fine madness still he did retain 
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain." 

Drummond's Sonnet "Icarus" pleased him with its stirring 

line, — 

"For still the shore my brave attempt resounds," 

and was hinted at in "Walden." In hardly any instance does 
I [55] 



THOREAU 

Thoreau give, in his published works, the author for his verses. 
He supposed those who read him would either know the 
poets he quoted, or else admire his good things heartily 
enough, without knowing on what bough the apple grew that 
made the tart. Yet few persons would credit Spenser (in the 
"Ruines of Rome") with the modernness of these lines: — 

"Rome living was the world's sole ornament, 
And dead is now the world's sole monument. 

With her own weight down-pressed now she lies, 
And by her heaps her hugeness testifies." 

Or that Francis Quarles, in his " Hieroglyphics of the Life 
of Man," could be thus plain : — 

''And now the cold autumnal dews are seen 
To cobweb every green ; 
And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear 
The fast declining year." 
Or this:— 

"To Athens gowned he goes, and from that school 
Returns unsped, a more instructed fool ; " 

or this, from the same Quarles, which (begging Shakespeare's 
pardon) might have been done by Shakespeare, — the account 
of a beggar, from the "Emblems": — 

"That bold adopts each house he views his own. 
Makes every purse his checquer, and at pleasure 
Walks forth and taxes all the world, like Caesar." 

Ever alive to distinction, he admired that verse of Habing- 
ton's, — 

[56] 



READING 

"Let's set so just 
A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust 
The poet's sentence, and not still aver 
Each art is to itself a flatterer." 

The poem of the same author, with that nonpareil title, ^^Nox 
nocti indicat scientiam^^'' drew the Eskimo race, — 

"Some nation yet shut in 
With hills of ice." 

He hears Daniel again, discoursing of learning, — 

"How many thousand never heard the name 
Of Sidney or of Spenser, or their books ! 
And yet, brave fellows, and presume of fame, — 
And seem to bear down all the world with looks." 

He also loved William Browne''s "Pastorals," — of all Eng- 
land's books, one richest in out-door sympathies. These cita- 
tions may serve to show Thoreau''s taste in English, which I 
cannot but think very exquisite; and this will be still more 
of account as George Peele says, — 

"When Fame's great double doors fall to, and shut." 

To Thoreau may be applied what John Birkenhead said in 
his tribute to Beaumont the dramatist, — 

*^Thy ocean fancy knew nor banks nor dams; 
We ebb down dry to pebble anagrams;" 

putting the word "labor" in the place of "fancy." 

He valued Homer for his nature, Virgil for his beauty, the 
Robin Hood Ballads and Chaucer for their health, Ossian for 

[57] 



THOREAU 

his grandeur, Persius for his philosophy, Milton for his ele- 
gance. Perhaps the "Lycidas" was his favorite short poem; at 
least I have heard it most often from his mouth; but he knew 
the Robin Hood Ballads remarkably well. 

He was by no means one of those crotchety persons who 
believe, because they set up Plato or Goethe or Shakespeare 
as the absolute necessities of literary worship, that all other 
students must so make idols of them. I never knew him say a 
good word for Plato, and I fear he had never finished Shake- 
speare, His was a very uncompleted reading; there being 
with him a pressure of engrossing flowers, birds, snow-storms, 
swamps, and seasons. He had no favorites among the French 
or Germans and I do not recall a modern writer except Car- J 
lyle and Ruskin whom he valued much. In fact, the pointed . 
and prismatic style now so common, and the chopped-hay 
fashion of writing, suited not with his homely, long-staple 
vein. For novels, stories, and such matters, he was devoid of 
all curiosity; and for the works of Dickens had a hearty con- 
tempt. Usually, all the popular books were sealed volumes to 
him. But no labor was too onerous, no material too costly, 
if expended on the right enterprise. His working up the In- 
dians corroborates this. 

Everything has its price. These books form a library by j 

themselves. Extracts from reliable authorities from De Bry to I 

'I 
poor Schoolcraft, with the early plates and maps accurately i 

copied, and selections from travellers the world over; for his 

notes embraced all that bears on his "list of subjects," — 

wherever scalps, wampum, and the Great Spirit prevail, — in 

[58] 



READING 

all uncivilized people. Indian customs in Natick are savage 
customs in Brazil, the Sandwich Islands, or Timbuctoo. With 
the Indian vocabularies he was familiar, and in his Maine ex- 
cursions tested his knowledge by all the words he could get 
from the savages in puris naturalihus. Personally these living 
red men were not charming; and he would creep out of camp 
at night to refresh his olfactories, damped with uncivilized 
perfumes, which it seems, like musquash and other animals, 
they enjoy. After the toughest day's work, when even his 
bones ached, the Indians would keep awake till midnight, 
talking eternally all the while. They performed valiant feats 
as trencher-men, "licked the platter clean," and for all an- 
swer to many of his questions grunted; which did not dis- 
covu'age him, as he could grunt himself. Their knowledge of 
the woods, the absolutisms of their scent, sight, and appetite, 
amazed him. He says, "There is always a slight haze or mist 
in the brow of the Indian." He read and translated the Jesuit 
relations of the first Canadian missions, containing "the com- 
modities and discommodities" of the Indian life, such as the 
roasting of a fresh parson. He read that romantic book, 
"Faite par le Sieur de la Borde," upon the origin, manners, 
customs, wars, and voyages of the Caribs, who were the In- 
dians of the Antilles of America; how these patriots will sell 
their beds in the morning (their memories too short for 
night), and in their heaven, Ouicou^ the Carib beer runs all the 
while. The children eat dirt and the mothers work. If the dead 
man own a negro, they bury him with his master to wait on 
him in paradise, and despatch the doctor to be sure of one 

[59] 



THOREAU 

in the other state. The men and women dress alike, and they 
have no police or civility; everybody does what he pleases. 

"ho, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
Brews beer in heaven, and drinks it for mankind." 

Pope [altered^. 

Another faithful reading was those old Roman farmers, 
Cato and Varro, and musically named Columella, for whom he 
had a liking. He is reminded of them by seeing the farmers 
so busy in the fall carting out their compost. "I see the 
farmer now on every side carting out his manure, and 
sedulously making his compost-heap, or scattering it over 
his grass-ground and breaking it up with a mallet, and 
it reminds me of Cato'^s advice. He died 150 years before 
Christ, Indeed, the farmer's was pretty much the same rou- 
tine then as now. ^ Sterguilinium magnum stude ut habeas. 
Stercus sedulo conserva, cum exportatis purgato et commi- 
nuito. Per autumnum evehito.'' Study to have a great dung- 
heap. Carefully preserve your dung. When you carry it out, 
make clean work of it, and break it up fine. Carry it out 
during the autumn."" Just such directions as you find in the 
Farmers' Almanac to-day. As if the farmers of Concord 
were obeying Cato's directions, who but repeated the maxims 
of a remote antiquity. Nothing can be more homely and 
suggestive of the every-day life of the Roman agriculturists, 
thus supplying the usual deficiencies in what is technically 
called Roman history; i.e., revealing to us the actual life 
of the Romans, the "how they got their living," and 
"what they did from day to day." Rome and the Romans 

[60] 



READING 

commonly are a piece of rhetoric, but we have here their 
"New England Farmer," or the very manual those Roman 
farmers read, as fresh as a dripping dishcloth from a Roman 
kitchen. 

His study of old writers on Natural History was careful: 
Aristotle, ^Elian, and Theophrastus he sincerely entertained, 
and found from the latter that neither the weather nor its 
signs had altered since his day. Pliny's magnum opus was his 
last reading in this direction, a work so valuable to him, with 
the authors just named, that he meant probably to translate 
and write on the subject as viewed by the ancients. As illus- 
trations, he carefully noted many facts from modern travel- 
lers, whose writing hatches Jack-the-Giant-Killers as large 
as Pliny's. He observed that Aristotle was furnished by the 
king with elephants and other creatures for dissection and 
study: his observations on the habits of fish and their nests 
especially interested Thoreau, an expert in spawn. In con- 
tinuing this line of study, he was aided by the perusal of St. 
Pierre, Gerard, Linnaeus, and earlier writers. The "Studies of 
Nature" he admired, as written with enthusiasm and spirit, 
— qualities in his view essential to all good writing. The old 
English botanist pleased him by his affectionate interest in 
plants, with something quaint, like Evelyn, Tusser, and Wal- 
ton. Recent scientific pdte-de-^oie-gras — a surfeit of micro- 
scope and "dead words with a tail" — he valued for what it 
is worth — the stuffing. For the Swede, his respect was tran- 
scendent. There is no better explanation of his love for bot- 
any than the old — "Consider the lilies of the field, how they 

[61 ] 



THOREAU 

grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto 
you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these." His pleasant company, during so many days of 
every year, he wished he was better acquainted with. The 
names and classes change, the study of the lovely flower per- 
sists. He wished to know willow and grass and sedge, and 
there came always with the new year the old wish renewed: 
a carex, a salix, kept the family secret. 



[62] 



NATURE 



" For this present, hard 
Is the fortune of the bard 
Born out of time." 

Emerson. 



CHAPTER IV 

NATURE 

His habit was to go abroad a portion of each day, to fields 
or woods or the Concord River. "I go out," he said, "to see 
what I have caught in my traps which I set for facts." He 
looked to fabricate an epitome of creation, and give us a 
homoeopathy of Nature. During many years he used the after- 
noon for walking, and usually set forth about half-past two, 
returning at half-past five; this (three hours) was the average 
length of his walk. As he got over the ground rapidly, if de- 
sirable (his step being very long for so short a man), he had 
time enough to visit all the ordinary points of interest in his 
neighborhood. In these walks, two things he must have from 
his tailor: his clothes must fit, and the pockets, especially, 
must be made with reference to his out-door pursuits. They 
must accommodate his note-book and spy-glass; and so their 
width and depth was regulated by the size of the note-book. 
It was a cover for some folded papers, on which he took 
his out-of-door notes; and this was never omitted, rain or 
shine. It was his invariable companion, and he acquired great 
skill in conveying by a few lines or strokes a long story, which 
in his written Journal might occupy pages. Abroad, he used 
the pencil, writing but a few moments at a time, during the 
walk ; but into the note-book must go all measurements with 
the foot-rule which he always carried, or the surveyor's tape 
that he often had with him. Also all observations with his spy- 

[65 J 



THOREAU 

glass (another invariable companion for years), all conditions 
of plants, spring, summer, and fall, the depth of snows, the 
strangeness of the skies,— all went down in this note-book. 
To his memory he never trusted for a fact, but to the page 
and the pencil, and the abstract in the pocket, not the Jour- 
nal. I have seen bits of this note-book, but never recognized 
any word in it; and I have read its expansion in the Journal, 
in many pages, of that which occupied him but five minutes 
to write in the field. "Have you written up your notes in 
your Journal.?" was one of his questions. Such was the char- 
acter of his mind,— to make what is called little become 
grand and noble, and thus to dignify life. "To have some one 
thing to do, and do it perfectly,''— many times have I heard 
this maxim for students fall from his lips. 

In his Journal for November 9, 1851, I found this entry 
describing an incident which I could recall: "In our walks, 
Channing takes out his note-book sometimes, and tries to 
write as I do, but all in vain. He soon puts it up again, or 
contents himself with scrawling some sketch of the landscape. 
Observing me still scribbling, he will say that he confines him- 
self to the ideal,— purely ideal remarks,— he leaves the facts 
to me. Sometimes he will say, a little petulantly, 'I am univer- 
sal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite.'" 

The particular and definite were much to Thoreau. His 
pockets were large to hold and keep not only his implements, 
but the multitude of objects which he brought home from 
his walks; objects of all kinds,— pieces of wood or stone, 
lichens, seeds, nuts, apples, or whatever he had found for his 

[66] 



I 

NATURE 

uses. For he was a vigorous collector, never omitting to get 
and keep every possible thing in his direction of study. 

He did not walk with any view to health, or exercise, or 
amusement. His diet was spare enough to have been digested 
if he had never stirred an inch; usually thin and in ctpital 
health,— as elastic as an Indian, — he needed no artificial 
I prop to keep him vital; and he might have slept, as Harrison 
I says of the old English, with a block of wood for a pillow. 
No, the walk, with him, was for work; it had a serious pur- 
j pose; witness the thirty volumes of Journals left by him,— 
and only going back to 1850. As I walk for recreation Ind 
variety, after reading, these walks of Thoreau were something 
aside from my habits; and, unlike my own, had a local aim. 
While he was not, in the usual sense, a scientific man,— his 
talent (as he always thought and said) being literary,— he was, 
though in no narrow view, a naturalist. The idea he conceived 
was, that he might, upon a small territory,— such a space as 
that filled by the town of Concord,— construct a chart or 
calendar which should chronicle the phenomena of the seasons 
in their order, and give their general average for the year. 
This was only one of the various plans he had in view during 
his walks; but his habit of mind demanded complete accuracy, 
the utmost finish, and that nothing should be taken on hear- 
say; believing that Nature would only so in perfection, and 
truly could no otherwise be reported. It is obvious how vast 
a work this is, and that he could only have completed some 
portion of it in a long lifetime. Plis calendar embraced cold 
and heat, rain and snow, ice and water; he had his gauges 

[67] 



THOREAU 

on the river, which he consulted winter and summer; he knew 
the temperature of all the springs in the town; he measured 
the snows when remarkable. All unusual changes of weather, 
with novel skies, storms, views, find place in his notes. 

All must get included. "No fruit grows in vain. The red 
squirrel harvests the fruit of the pitch-pine."" He wanted 
names. "I never felt easy till I got the name for the Andro- 
pogon scoparius (a grass) : I was not acquainted with my beau- 
tiful neighbor, but since I knew it was the Andropogon I 
have felt more at home in my native fields." He had no trace 
of that want of memory which infests some amiable beings. 
He loved the world and could not pass a berry, nor fail to 
ask his question, I fear — leading. Men who had seen the 
partridge drum, caught the largest pickerel, and eaten the 
most swamp apples, did him service; and he long frequented 
one who, if not a sinner, was no saint, — Goodwin the gunner. 
The Farmer who could find him a hawk's egg or give him a 
fisher*'s foot, he would wear in his heart of hearts, whether 
called Jacob Farmer or not. He admired our toil-crucified 
farmers, conditioned like granite and pine, slow and silent as 
the seasons, — "like the sweetness of a nut, like the tough- 
ness of hickory. He, too, is a redeemer for me. How superior 
actually to the faith he professes! He is not an office-seeker. 
What an institution, what a revelation is a man ! We are wont 
foolishly to think the creed a man professes a more significant 
fact than the man he is. It matters not how hard the con- 
ditions seemed, how mean the world, for a man is a preva- 
lent force and a new law himself He is a system whose law 

[68] 



NATURE 

is to be observed. The old farmer still condescends to counte- 
nance this nature and order of things. It is a great encourage- 
ment that an honest man makes this world his abode. He rides 
on the sled drawn by oxen, world-wise, yet comparatively so 
young as if he had not seen scores of winters. The farmer 
spoke to me, I can swear, clear, cold, moderate as the snow 
where he treads. Yet what a faint impression that encounter 
may make on me after all. Moderate, natural, true, as if he 
were made of stone, wood, snow."^ 

No hour tolled on the great world-horologe must be 
omitted, no movement of the second-hand of this patent 
lever that is so full-jewelled. He wrote, 

''Behold these flowers, let us be up with time, 
Not dreaming of three thousand years ago." 

He drinks in the meadow, at Second Division Brook; "then 
sits awhile to watch its yellowish pebbles, and the cress in it 
and the weeds. The ripples cover its surface as a network, 
and are faithfully reflected on the bottom. In some places, 
the sun reflected from ripples on a flat stone looks like a 
golden comb. The whole brook seems as busy as a loom : it is 
a woof and warp of ripples; fairy fingers are throwing the 
shuttle at every step, and the long, waving brook is the fine 
product. The water is so wonderfully clear, — to have a hut 
here and a foot-path to the brook. For roads, I think that 
a poet cannot tolerate more than a foot-path through the 
field. That is wide enough, and for purposes of winged poesy 
suffices. I would fain travel by a foot-path round the world." 
1 From the Journal of 1851. 

[69] 



THOREAU 

So might he say in that mood, yet think the wider wood- 
path was not bad, as two could walk side by side in it in the 
ruts, — ay, and one more in the horse-track. He loved in 
the summer to lay up a stock of these experiences "for the 
winter, as the squirrel, of nuts, — something for conversation 
in winter evenings. I love to think then of the more distant 
walks I took in summer. Might I not walk further till I hear 
new crickets, till their creak has acquired some novelty as if 
they were a new species whose habitat I had discovered .?*" 

Night and her stars were not neglected friends. He saw 

''The wandering moon 
Riding near her highest noon," 

and sings in this strain: — 

"My dear, my dewy sister, let thy rain descend on me. I 
not only love thee, but I love the best of thee; that is to 
love thee rarely. I do not love thee every day, commonly 
I love those who are less than thee; I love thee only on great 
days. Thy dewy words feed me like the manna of the morn- 
ing. I am as much thy sister as thy brother; thou art as 
much my brother as my sister. It is a portion of thee and a 
portion of me which are of kin. Thou dost not have to woo 
me. I do not have to woo thee. O my sister! O Diana! thy 
tracks are on the eastern hill. Thou merely passed that way. 
I, the hunter, saw them in the morning dew. My eyes are 
the hounds that pursued thee. Ah, my friend, what if I do 
not know thee.? I hear thee. Thou canst speak; I cannot; 
I fear and forget to answer; I am occupied with hearing. I 

[70 J 



NATURE 

awoke and thought of thee, thou wast present to my mind. 
How cam"'st thou there? Was I not present to thee hke- 
wise ?" 

Thou couldst look down with pity on that mound, — some 
silver beams faintly raining through the old locust boughs, 
for thy lover, thy Endymion, is watching there! He was 
abroad with thee after the midnight mass had tolled, and 
the consecrated dust of yesterdays "each in its narrow cell 
for ever laid,"" which he lived to hive in precious vases for 
immortality, — tales of natural piety, bound each to each. 
He said once 

''Now chiefly is my natal hour. 
And only now my prime of life. 

I will not doubt the love untold, 
Which not my worth nor want hath bought. 
Which wooed me young and wooes me old. 
And to this evening hath me brought." 

Thus conversant was he with great Nature. Perchance he 
reached the wildness for which he longed, "a nature which 
I cannot put my foot through, woods where the wood-thrush 
for ever sings, where the hours are early morning ones and 
the day is for ever improved, where I might have a fertile 
unknown for a soil about me." 

Always suggestive (possibly to some, unattractive) themes 
lay about him in this Nature. Even "along the wood-paths, 
wines of all kinds and qualities, of noblest vintages, are 
bottled up in the skins of countless berries, for the taste of 
men and animals. To men they seem offered, not so much 

[71 J 



THOREAU 

for food as for sociality, that they may picnic with Nature. 
Diet drinks, cordial wines, we pluck and eat in remembrance 
of her. It is a sacrament, a communion. The not Forbidden 
Fruits, which no Serpent tempts us to taste." 

I never heard him complain that the plants were too 
many, the hours too long. As he said of the crow, "If he 
has voice, I have ears." The flowers are furnished, and he can 
bring his note-book. 

**As if by secret sight, he knew 
Where, in far fields, the orchis grew." 

He obeyed the plain rule, — 

"Take the goods the gods provide thee," 

and having neither ship nor magazine, gun nor javelin, 
horse nor hound, had conveyed to him a property in many 
things equal to the height of all his ambition. What he did 
not covet was not forced on his attention. What he desired 
lay at his feet. The breath of morning skies with the saffron 
of Aurora beautifully dight; children of the air wafting the 
smiles of spring from the vexed Bermoothes; fragrant life- 
everlasting in the dry pastures; blue forget-me-nots along 
the brook, — were his: ice piled its shaggy enamel for him, 
where coral cranberries yesterday glowed in the grass; and 
forests whispered loving secrets in his ear. For is not the 
earth kind.'' 

"We are rained and snowed on with gems. I confess that 
I was a little encouraged, for I was beginning to believe 
that Nature was poor and mean, and I now was convinced 

[72] 



NATURE 

that she turned off as good work as ever. What a world we 
live in! Where are the jewellers' shops? There is nothing 
handsomer than a snow-flake and a dew-drop, I may say that 
the Maker of the world exhausts his skill with each snow- 
flake and dew-drop that He sends down. We think that the 
one mechanically coheres, and that the other simply flows 
together and falls; but in truth they are the product of en- 
thusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the artist's 
utmost skill." 

. . . "The first humble-bee, that prince of hummers, — he 
follows after flowers. To have your existence depend on 
flowers, like the bee and humming-birds. ... I expect that 
the lichenist will have the keenest relish for Nature in her 
every-day mood and dress. He will have the appetite of the 
worm that never dies, of the grub. This product of the bark 
is the essence of all times. The lichenist loves the tripe of the 
rock, that which eats and digests the rock: he eats the eater. 
A rail is the fattest and sleekest of coursers for him. . . . The 
blue curls and fragrant everlasting, with their ripening aroma, 
show themselves now pushing up on dry fields, bracing to the 
thought; I need not smell the calamint, — it is a balm to my 
mind to remember its fragrance. The pontederia is in its 
prime, alive with butterflies, — yellow and others. I see its 
tall blue spikes reflected beneath the edge of the pads on each 
side, pointing down to a heaven beneath as well as above. 
Earth appears but a thin crust or pellicle. 

"It is a leaf, — that of the green-briar, — for poets to sing 
about : it excites me to a sort of autumnal madness. They are 

[73] 



THOREAU 

leaves for satyrs and fauns to make their garlands of. My 
thoughts break out like them, spotted all over, yellow and 
green and brown, — the freckled leaf. Perhaps they should 
be poison to be thus spotted. ... I have now found all the 
Hawk-weeds. Singular are these genera of plants, — plants 
manifestly related, yet distinct. They suggest a history to 
nature, a natural history in a new sense. . . . Any anomaly 
in vegetation makes Nature seem more real and present in 
her working, as the varfoiis red and yellow excrescences on 
young oaks. I am aifected as if it were a different nature that 
produced them. As if a poet were born, who had designs in 
his head. ... I perceive in the Norway cinque-foil {Poteyitilla 
Norvegica\ ijow nearly out of blossom, that the alternate six 
leaves of the -calyx are closing over the seeds to protect them. 
This evidence of forethought, this simple reflection, in a 
double sense of the term, in this flower is affecting to me, as 
if it said to me, 'Not even when I have blossomed and have 
lost my painted petals, and am preparing to die down to its 
root, do I forget to fall with my arms around my babe, faith- 
ful to the last, that the infant may be found preserved in 
the arms of the frozen mother.' There is one door closed of the 
closing year. I am not ashamed to be contemporary with the 
cinque-foil. May I perform my part as well! We love to see 
Nature fruitful in whatever kind. I love to see the acorns 
plenty on the scrub-oaks, ay, and the night-shade berries. It 
assures us of her vigor, and that she may equally bring forth 
fruits which we prize. I love to see the potato-balls numer- 
ous and large, as I go through a low field; the plant thus 

[74] 



NATURE 

bearing fruit at both ends, saying ever and anon, 'Not only 
these tubers I offer you for the present, but if you will 
have new varieties (if these do not satisfy you), plant these 
seeds, fruit of the strong soil, containing potash; the vin- 
tage is come, the olive is ripe. Why not for my coat-of-arms, 
for device, a drooping cluster of potato-balls in a potato 
field?' 

"I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, 
And with forced fingers rude, 
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year." 

These glimpses at the life of the lover of Nature admonish 
us of the richness, the satisfactions in his unimpoverished 
districts. Man needs an open mind and a pure purpose, to 
become receptive. His interest in animals equalled that in 
flowers. At one time he carried his spade, digging in the 
galleries and burrows of field-mice. "They run into their 
holes, as if they had exploded before your eyes," Many voy- 
ages he made in cold autumn days and winter walks on the 
ice, to examine the cabins of the muskrat and discover pre- 
cisely how and of what they were built, — the suite of rooms 
always damp, yet comfortable for the household, dressed in 
their old-fashioned waterproofs. He respected the skunk as a 
human being in a very humble sphere. 

In his western tour of 1861, when he went to Minnesota 
and found the crab-apple and native Indians, he pleased him- 
self with a new friend, — the gopher with thirteen stripes. 
Rabbits, woodchucks, red, gray, and "chipmunk" squirrels, he 
knew by heart ; the fox never came amiss. A Canada lynx was 

[75] 



THOREAU 

killed in Concord, whose skin he eagerly obtained and pre- 
served. It furnished a proof of wildness intact, and the nine 
lives of a wildcat. He mused on the change of habit in do- 
mestic animals, and recites a porcine epic, — the adventures 
of a fanatic pig. He was a debtor to the cows like other 
walkers. 

"When you approach to observe them, they mind you just 
enough. How wholesome and clean their clear brick red! No 
doubt man impresses his own character on the beasts which 
he tames and employs. They are not only humanized, but 
they acquire his particular human natiure. . . , The farmer 
acts on the ox, and the ox reacts on the farmer. They do not 
meet half way, it is true; but they do meet at a distance from 
the centre of each, proportionate to each one**s intellectual 
power." 

Let us hasten to his lovely idyl of the "Beautiful Heifer": — 
"One more confiding heifer, the fairest of the herd, did by 
degrees approach as if to take some morsel from our hands, 
while our hearts leaped to oiu" mouths with expectation and 
delight. She by degrees drew near with her fair limbs (pro- 
gressive), making pretence of browsing; nearer and nearer, 
till there was wafted to us the bovine fragrance, — cream of 
all the dairies that ever were or will be: and then she raised 
her gentle muzzle towards us, and snuffed an honest recogni- 
tion within hand's reach. I saw it was possible for his herd 
to inspire with love the herdsman. She was as delicately fea- 
tured as a hind. Her hide was mingled white and fawn color, 
and on her muzzle's tip there was a white spot not bigger 

[76] 



NATURE 

than a daisy; and on her side turned toward me, the map of 
Asia plain to see.^ 

"Farewell, dear heifer! Though thou forgettest me, my 
prayer to heaven shall be that thou mayst not forget thyself. 
There was a whole bucolic in her snufF, I saw her name was 
Sumac. And by the kindred spots I knew her mother, more 
sedate and matronly with full-grown bag, and on her sides 
was Asia great and small, the plains of Tartary, even to the 
pole; while on her daughter''s was Asia Minor. She was not 
disposed to wanton with the herdsman. And as I walked she 
followed me, and took an apple from my hand, and seemed 
to care more for the hand than the apple. So innocent a face 
as I have rarely seen on any creature, and I have looked in 
the face of many heifers. And as she took the apple from my 
hand I caught the apple of her eye. She smelled as sweet as 
the clethra blossom. There was no sinister expression. And 
for horns, though she had them, they were so well disposed 
in the right place, but neither up nor down, I do not now 
remember she had any. No horn was held towards me."" 
« Seeing a flock of turkeys, the old faintly gobbling, the 
half-grown young peeping, they suggest a company of "tur- 
key-men.'" He loves a cricket or a bee: — 

"As I went through the Deep Cut before sunrise [August 
23, 1861], I heard one or two early humble-bees come out on 
the damp sandy bank, whose low hum sounds like distant 
horns from far in the horizon, over the woods. It was long 

1 In much that Mr. Thoreau wrote, there was a philological side, — this 
needs to be thoughtfully considered, w. e. c. 

[ 77 ] 



THOREAU 

before I detected the bees that made it, — so far-away mu- 
sical it sounded, hke the shepherds in some distant eastern 
vale, greeting the king of day. [September 5.] Why was there 
never a poem on the cricket? Its creak seems to me to be one 
of the most obvious and prominent facts in the world, and 
the least heeded. In the report of a man"'s contemplations I 
look to see something answering to this sound, — so serene 
and cool, the iced-cream of song. It is modulated shade: 
the incessant cricket of the fall is heard in the grass, chirp- 
ing from everlasting to everlasting; no transient love -strain, 
hushed when the incubating season is past. They creak hard 
now, after sunset; no word will spell it. The humming of a 
dor-bug drowns all the noise of the village. So roomy is the 
universe." 

No class of creatures he found better than birds. With 
these mingled his love for sound: "Listen to music reli- 
giously, as if it were the last strain you might hear. Sugar is 
not as sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear. Is not 
all music a hum more or less divine.'*" His concert was the 
bluebird, the robin, and song-sparrow, melting into joy after 
the silent winter. "Do you know on what bushes a little 
peace, faith, and contentment grow.? Go a-berrying early and 
late after them." The color of the bluebird seemed to him 
"as if he carried the sky on his back. And where are gone the 
bluebirds whose warble was wafted to me so lately like a blue 
wavelet through the air, warbling so innocently to inquire if 
any of its mates are within call? The very grain of the air 
seems to have undergone a change, and is ready to split into 

[78] 



NATURE 

the form of the bluebird"'s warble. The air over these fields Is 
a foundry full of moulds for casting bluebirds' warbles. Me- 
thinks if it were visible or I could cast up some fine dust 
which would betray it, it would take a corresponding shape." 



[79] 



LITERARY THEMES 



"No tidings come to thee 
Not of thy very neighbors. 
That dwellen almost at thy doors, 
Thou hearest neither that nor this ; 
For when thy labor all done is. 
And hast made all thy reckonings. 
Instead of rest and of new things. 
Thou goest home to thy house anon." 

Chaucer. 

"To hill and cloud his face was known, — 
It seemed the likeness of their own." 

Emerson. 

"His short parenthesis of life was sweet." 

Stoker's Life of Wolsey. 



CHAPTER V 

LITERARY THEMES 

"Men commonly exaggerate the theme. Some themes they 
think are significant, and others insignificant. I feel that my 
life is very homely, my pleasures very cheap. Joy and sorrow, 
success and failure, grandeur and meanness, and indeed most 
words in the English language, do not mean for me what 
they do for my neighbors. I see that my neighbors look with 
compassion on me, that they think it is a mean and unfortu- 
nate destiny which makes me to walk in these fields and 
woods so much, and sail on this river alone. But so long as I 
find here the only real elysium, I cannot hesitate in my choice. 
My work is writing, and I do not hesitate though I know 
that no subject is too trivial for me, tried by ordinary stand- 
ards; for, ye fools! the theme is nothing, the life is everything. 
All that interests the reader is the depth and intensity of 
the life exerted. We touch our subject but by a point which 
has no breadth ; but the pyramid of our experience, or our in- 
terest in it, rests on us by a broader or narrower base. What 
is man is all in all. Nature nothing but as she draws him out 
and reflects him. Give me simple, cheap, and homely themes." 
These words from Thoreau partially illustrate his views 
upon the subjects he proposed to treat and how they should 
be treated, with that poetic wealth he enjoyed; and no one 
need look for prose. He never thought or spoke or wrote 
that. In the same spirit he says of his first book, which had a 

[83] 



THOREAU 

slow sale: "I believe that this result is more inspiring and 
better for me than if a thousand had bought my wares. It 
affects my privacy less, and leaves me freer. Men generally 
over-estimate their praises." 

Of his themes, the following is one view among others: — 
"As I walked I was intoxicated with the slight, spicy odor 
of the hickory-buds and the bruised bark of the black-birch, 
and in the fall with the pennyroyal. The sight of budding 
woods intoxicates me like diet-drink. I feel my Maker bless- 
ing me. For years my appetite was so strong that I fed, I 
browsed on the pine-forest's edge seen against the winter 
horizon, — the silvery needles of the pine straining the light; 
the young aspen-leaves like light green fires. The young 
birch-leaves, very neatly plaited, small, triangular, light 
green leaves, yield an agreeable, sweet fragrance (just ex- 
panded and sticky), sweet-scented as innocence. To the sane 
man the world is a musical instrument. Formerly methought 
Nature developed as I developed, and grew up with me. My 
life was ecstasy. In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I 
can remember that I was all alive and inhabited my body 
with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weariness and its 
refreshment were sweet to me. This earth was the most glo- 
rious musical instrument, and I was audience to its strains. 
To have such sweet impressions made on us, such ecstasies 
begotten of the breezes, I can remember I was astonished. 
I said to myself, I said to others, there comes into my mind 
such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine, heavenly 
pleasure, a sense of salvation and expansion. And I have had 

[ 84 ] 



LITERARY THEMES 

naught to do with it; I perceive that I am dealt with by 
superior powers. By all manner of bounds and traps threat- 
ening the extreme penalty of the divine law, it behooves us 
to preserve the purity and sanctity of the mind. That I am 
innocent to myself, that I love and reverence my life.""' 

To make these themes into activities, he considered, — 

"The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as 
steadily and incessantly as Nature"'s. Nothing must be post- 
poned; take time by the forelock, now or never. You must 
live in the present, launch yourself on any wave, find your 
eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island oppor- 
tunities, and look toward another land. There is no other 
land, there is no other life but this or the like of this. Where 
the good husbandman is, there is the good soil. Take any 
other course, and life will be a succession of regrets." 

If writing is his business, to do this well must be sought. 
August 21, 1851, he wrote: — 

"What a faculty must that be which can paint the most 
barren landscape and humblest life in glorious colors! It is 
pure and invigorated sense reacting on a sound and strong 
imagination. Is not this the poet's case? The intellect of most 
men is barren. They neither fertilize nor are fertilized. It is 
the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect 
fruitful, that gives birth to imagination. When we were dead 
and dry as the highway, some sense which has been healthily 
fed will put us in relation with Nature, in sympathy with her, 
some grains of fertilizing pollen floating in the air fall on us, 
and suddenly the sky is all one rainbow, is full of music and 

[85] 



THOREAU 

fragrance and flavor. The man of intellect only, the prosaic 
man, is a barren and staminiferous flower; the poet is a fertile 
and perfect flower. Men are such confirmed arithmeticians 
and slaves of business, that I cannot easily find a blank- 
book that has not a red line or a blue one for dollars and 
cents. The poet must keep himself unstained and aloof. Let 
him perambulate the bounds of Imagination*'s provinces, the 
realms of poesy and not the insignificant boundaries of 
towns. How many faculties there are which we have never 
found ! Some men methinks have found only their hands and 
feet. At least I have seen some who appeared never to have 
found their heads, but used them only instinctively as the 
negro butts with his. 

"It is wise to write on many subjects, to try many themes, 
that so you may find the right and inspiring one. Be greedy 
of occasions to express your thoughts; improve the oppor- 
tunity to draw analogies; there are innumerable avenues to 
a perception of the truth. Improve the suggestion of each 
object, however humble, however slight and transient the 
provocation; what else is there to be improved.? Who knows 
what opportunities he may neglect.? It is not in vain that 
the mind turns aside this way or that: follow its leading, 
apply it whither it inclines to go. Probe the universe in a 
myriad points. Be avaricious of these impulses. Nature makes 
a thousand acorns to get one oak. He is a wise man and 
experienced who has taken many views, to whom stones 
and plants and animals, and a myriad objects have each 
suggested something, contributed something. We cannot 

[86] 



LITERARY THEMES 

write well or truly but what we write with gusto. The body 
and senses must conspire with the mind. Experience is the 
act of the whole man, — that oiu" speech may be vascular. 
The intellect is powerless to express thought without the 
aid of the heart and liver and of every member. Often I feel 
that my head stands out too dry when it should be immersed. 
A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the 
corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always 
essential that we live to do what we are doing, do it with 
a heart. There are flowers of thought and there are leaves 
of thought, and most of oiu* thoughts are merely leaves to 
which the thread of thought is the stem. Whatever things I 
perceive with my entire man, those let me record and it will 
be poetry. The sounds which I hear with the consent and 
coincidence of all my senses, those are significant and musical; 
at least, they only are heard. YSeptemher 2.] I omit the un- 
usual, the hurricanes and earthquakes, and describe the com- 
mon. This has the greatest charm, and is the true theme of 
poetry. You may have the extraordinary for your province 
if you will; let me have the ordinary. Give me the obscure 
life, the cottage of the poor and humble, the work-days of 
the world, the barren fields ; the smallest share of all things 
but poetical perception. Give me but the eyes to see the 
things which you possess. 

"How watchful we must be to keep the crystal well clear, 
that it be not made turbid by our contact with the world, 
so that it will not reflect objects. If I would preserve my re- 
lation to Nature, I must make my life more moral, more 

[87] 



THOREAU 

pure and innocent. The problem is as precise and simple as 
a mathematical one. I must not live loosely, but more and 
more continently. How can we expect a harvest of thought 
who have not had a seed-time of character.? Already some of 
my small thoughts, fruit of my spring life, are ripe, like the 
berries which feed the first broods of birds ; and some others 
are prematurely ripe and bright like the lower leaves of the 
herbs which have felt the Summers's drought. Human life 
may be transitory and full of trouble, but the perennial mind 
whose survey extends from that spring to this, from Columella 
to Hosmer, is superior to change. I will identify myself with 
that which did not die with Columella and will not die 
with Hosmer." 

As the song of the spring birds makes the richest music 
of the year, it seems a fit overture to have given a few of 
Thoreau's spring sayings upon his life and work. Few men 
knew better, or so well, what these were. In some senses he 
was a scientific man, in others not. I do not think he relished 
science in long words, or the thing Wordsworth calls — 

^'Philosopher! a fingering slave. 
One that would peep and botanize 
Upon his mother's grave." 

He loved Nature as a child, — reverenced her veils, that 
we should not conceitedly endeavor to raise. He did not be- 
lieve the study of anatomy helped the student to a practical 
knowledge of the human body, and replied to a doctor's sug- 
gested prescription, "How do you know that his pills will go 
down.''" Nor that the eggs of turtles to be, seen through a 

[88] 



LITERARY THEMES 

glass dai'kly, were turtles; and he said to the ornithologist 
who wished to hold his bird in his hand, that "he would 
rather hold it in his affections."" So he saw the colors of his 
with a kind heart, and let the spiders slide. Yet no man 
spent more labor in making out his bird by Wilson or Nuttall. 

His was a broad catholic creed. He thought of the Hindoo 
Mythology, "It rises on me like the full moon after the stars 
have come out, wading through some far summer stratum of 
sky." From Homer, who made a "corner" with Grecian my- 
thology, to his beloved Indian, whose life of scalping and 
clam-bakes was a religion, he could appreciate the good of 
creeds and forms and omit the scruples. He says: — 

"If I could, I would worship the paring of my nails. He 
who discovers two gods where there was only known to be 
one, and such a one ! I would fain improve every opportunity 
to wonder and worship, as a sunflower welcomes the light.'* 
"God could not be unkind to me if he should try. I love best 
to have each thing in its season, doing without it at all other 
times. It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advan- 
tage at all. I have never got over my surprise that I should 
have been born into the most estimable place in all the 
world, and in the very nick of time too. I heard one speak 
to-day of his sense of awe at the thought of God, and sug- 
gested to him that awe was the cause of the potato-rot." 

He again expressed himself in a lively way about these 
matters: "AVho are the religious? They who do not differ 
much from mankind generally, except that they are more 
conservative and timid and useless, but who in their conver- 

[89] 



THOREAU 

sation and correspondence talk about kindness and Heavenly 
Father, instead of going bravely about their business, trust- 
ing God ever." He once knew a minister, and photographs 
him : " Here ""s a man who can't butter his own bread, and he 
has just combined with a thousand like him to make a dipt 
toast for all eternity." 

Of a book published by Miss Harriet Martineau, that 
Minerva mediocre, he observes: "Miss Martineau's last book 
is not so bad as the timidity which fears its influence. As if 
the popularity of this or that book could be so fatal, and man 
would not still be man in the world. Nothing is so much to 
be feared as fear. Atheism may, comparatively, be popular 
with God." Religion, worship, and prayer were words he 
studied in their history; but out-of-doors (which can serve 
for the title of much of his writing) is his creed. He used this 
expression: "May I love and revere myself above all the gods 
that man has ever invented; may I never let the vestal fire 
go out in my recesses." 

He thought the past and the men of the past, as they crop 
out in institutions, were not as valuable as the present and 
the individual alive. "They who will remember only this kind 
of right, do as if they stood under a shed and affirmed that 
they were under the unobscured heavens. The shed has its 
use, but what is it to the heavens above." The institution of 
American slavery was a filthy and rotten shed which Thoreau 
used his utmost strength to cut away and burn up. From first 
to last he loved and honored abolitionism. Not one slave alone 
was expedited to Canada by Thoreau's personal assistance. 

[90 J 



SPRING AND AUTUMN 



"Methinks I hear the sound of time long past, 
Still murmuring o'er us in the lofty void 
Of these dark arches, like the ling'ring voice 
Of those who long ago within their graves have slept." 

Orra, a Tragedy. 



CHAPTER VI 

SPRING AND AUTUMN 

As he is dropping beans in the spring, he hears the bay- 
wing: — 

"I saw the world through a glass as it lies eternally. It re- 
minded me of many a summer sunset, of many miles of gray 
rails, of many a rambling pasture, of the farmhouse far in 
the fields, its milk-pans and well-sweep, and the cows coming 
home at twilight; I correct my Human views by listening to 
their Volucral. I ordinarily plod along a sort of white-washed 
prison entry, subject to some indifferent or even grovelling 
mood; I do not distinctly seize my destiny; I have turned 
down my light to the merest glimmer, and am doing some 
task which I have set myself. I take incredibly narrow views, 
live on the limits, and have no recollection of absolute truth. 
But suddenly, in some fortunate moment, the voice of eternal 
wisdom reaches me even, in the strain of the sparrow, and 
liberates me; whets and clarifies my own senses, makes me a 
competent witness.'' 

He says elsewhere of the same sparrow: "The end of its 
strain is like the ring of a small piece of steel wire dropped 
on an anvil." How he loved Aurora! how he loved the morn- 
ing! "You must taste the first glass of the day's nectar if 
you would get all the spirit of it. Its fixed air begins to stir 
and escape. The sweetness of the day crystallizes in the 
morning coolness." The morning was the spring of the day, 

[93] 



THOREAU • 

and spring the morning of the year. Then he said, musing: 
" All Nature revives at this season. With her it is really a new 
life, but with these church-goers it is only a revival of religion 
or hypocrisy; they go down stream to still muddier waters. 
It cheers me more to behold the mass of gnats which have 
revived in the spring sun. If a man do not revive with Na- 
ture in the spring, how shall he revive when a white-collared 
priest prays for him?" This dash at theological linen is im- 
mediately followed by " Small water-bugs in Clematis Brook." 

Of the willow fish-creel in Farrar's Brook, near the Nine- 
acre Corner Bridge, he says: — 

"It was equal to a successful stanza whose subject was 
spring. I see those familiar features, that large type with 
which all my life is associated, unchanged. We too are obey- 
ing the laws of all Nature. Not less important are the ob- 
servers of the birds than the birds themselves. This rain is 
good for thought, it is especially agreeable to me as I enter 
the wood and hear the rustling dripping on the leaves. It 
domiciliates me in nature. The woods are more like a house 
for the rain; the few slight noises resound more hollow in 
them, the birds hop nearer, the very trees seem still and pen- 
sive. We love to sit on and walk over sandy tracts in the 
spring, like cicindelas. These tongues of russet land, tapering 
and sloping into the flood, do almost speak to me. One piece 
of ice, in breaking on the river, rings when struck on an- 
other, like a trowel on a brick. The loud peop of a pigeon 
woodpecker is heard in our rear, and anon the prolonged and 
shrill cackle calling the thin wooded hillsides and pastures to 

[94] 



SPRING AND AUTUMN 

life. You doubt if the season will be long enough for such 
oriental and luxurious slowness. I think that my senses made 
the truest report the first time. 

"There is a time to watch the ripples on Ripple Lake, to 
look for arrow-heads, to study the rocks and lichens, a time 
to walk on sandy deserts, and the observer of nature must 
improve these seasons as much as the farmer his. Those ripple 
lakes^ lie now in the midst of mostly bare, brown, or tawny 
dry woodlands, themselves the most living objects. They may 
say to the first woodland flowers, — 'We played with the 
North winds here before ye were born!" When the playful 
breeze drops on the pool, it springs to right and left, quick 
as a kitten playing with dead leaves. 

"This pine warbler impresses me as if it were calling the 
trees to life; I think of springing twigs. Its jingle rings through 
the wood at short intervals, as if, like an electric spark, it 
imparted a fresh spring life to them. The fresh land emerging 
from the water reminds me of the isle which was called up 
from the bottom of the sea, which was given to Apollo. Or, 
like the skin of a pard, — the great mother leopard that 
Nature is, — where she lies at length, exposing her flanks to 
the sun. I feel as if I could land to kiss and stroke the very 
sward, it is so fair. It is homely and domestic to my eyes 
like the rug that lies before my hearth-side. As the walls of 
cities are fabled to have been built by music, so my pines 
were established by the song of the field-sparrow. I heard the 

1 Near Goose Pond. Emerson greatly admired these ripples, and I have 
visited these places with him in breezy autumn days. w. e. c. 

[95] 



THOREAU 

jingle of the blackbird, — some of the most liquid notes, as 
if produced by some of the water of the Pierian spring flow- 
ing through some kind of musical water-pipe, and at the 
same moment setting in motion a multitude of fine vibrating 
metallic springs, — like a shepherd merely meditating most 
enrapturing tunes on such a water-pipe. The robin*'s song 
gurgles out of all conduits now, — they are choked with it. 

"I hear at a distance in the meadow, still at long intervals, 
the hurried commencement of the bobolink's strain : the bird 
is just touching the strings of his theorbo, his glassi chord, 
his water-organ, and one or two notes globe themselves and 
fall in liquid bubbles from his teeming throat. . . . Be- 
ginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge's beat sounds 
faster and faster far away under the boughs and through 
the aisle of the wood, until it becomes a regular roll. How 
many things shall we not see and be and do, when we walk 
there where the partridge drums. The rush-sparrow jingles 
her small change, — pure silver, — on the counter of the pas- 
ture. How sweet it sounds in a clear, warm morning, in 
a wood-side pasture, amid the old corn-hills, or in sprout- 
lands, clear and distinct like 'a spoon in a cup,' the last part 
very clear and ringing. I hear the king-bird twittering or 
chattering like a stout-chested swallow, and the sound of 
snipes winnowing the evening air. The cuckoo reminds me 
of some silence among the birds I had not noticed. I hear the 
squirrel chirp in the wall, like a spoon.^ Times and seasons 

1 Sound and scent : in considering Thoreau you must constantly asso- 
ciate these senses with his way of looking after things, w. e. c. 

[96] 



SPRING AND AUTUMN 

may perhaps be best marked by the notes of reptiles; they 
express, as it were, the very feelings of the earth or nature. 
About May -day the ring of the first toad leaks into the gen- 
eral stream of sound, — a bubbling ring; I am thrilled to my 
very spine, it is so terrene a sound; as crowded with protu- 
berant bubbles as the rind of an orange: sufficiently consid- 
ered by its maker, in the night and the solitude. I hear the 
dumping sound of frogs, that know no winter. It is like the 
tap of a drum when human legions are mustering. It reminds 
me that Summer is now in earnest gathering her forces, and 
that ere long I shall see their waving plumes and hear the 
full bands and steady tread. What lungs ! what health ! what 
terrenity ^ (if not serenity) it suggests ! How many walks I take 
along the brooks in the spring ! What shall I call them ? Lesser 
ripariaP excursions.'' prairial rivular.'' If you make the least 
correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion 
to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and 
life itself is prolonged. Days are long enough and fair enough 
for the worthiest deeds. The day is an epitome of the year. 
I think that a perfect parallel may be drawn between the sea- 
sons of the day and of the year. 

"If the writer would interest readers, he must report so 
much life, using a certain satisfaction always as a, point d'appui. 
However mean and limited, it must be a genuine and con- 
tented life that he speaks out of. They must have the essence 
and oil of himself, tried out of the fat of his experience and 

joy." 

1 Note the philology, w. e. c. 

[97] 



THOREAU 

*'The Titan heeds his sky affairs. 
Rich rents and wide alliance shares ; 
Mysteries of color daily laid 
By the sun in light and shade ; 
And sweet varieties of chance." 

Color was a treat to Thoreau. He saw the seasons and the 
landscapes through their colors; and all hours and fields and 
woods spoke in varied hues which impressed him with senti- 
ment. " Nature does not forget beauty and outline even in a 
mud-turtle's shell." Is it winter? — he "loves the few homely 
colors of Nature at this season, her strong, wholesome browns, 
her sober and primeval grays, her celestial blue, her vivacious 
green, her pure, cold, snowy white. The mountains look like 
waves in a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff gale."" In early spring 
he thinks, — 

"The white saxifrage is a response from earth to the in- 
creased light of the year, the yellow crowfoot to the increased 
light of the sun. Why is the pollen of flowers commonly yel- 
low.? The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a 
reddish, permanent mistiness of the deciduous trees just burst- 
ing into leaf. The sorrel begins to redden the fields with 
ruddy health. The sun goes down red again like a high-colored 
flower of summer. As the white and yellow flowers of the spring 
are giving place to the rose and will soon to the red lily, so 
the yellow sun of spring has become a red sun of June drought, 
round and red like a midsummer flower, productive of torrid 
heats. Again, I am attracted by the deep scarlet of the wild 
rose, half open in the grass, all glowing with rosy light.'" 

[98 J 



SPRING AND AUTUMN 

"The soft, mellow, fawn-colored light of the July sunset 
seemed to come from the earth itself. My thoughts are drawn 
inward, even as clouds and trees are reflected in the smooth, 
still water. There is an inwardness even in the musquito's hum 
while I am picking blueberries in the dark wood. The land- 
scape is fine as behind glass, the horizon-edge distinct. The 
distant vales towards the north-west mountains lie up open 
and clear and elysian like so many Tempes. The shadows of 
trees are dark and distinct; the din of trivialness is silenced. 
The woodside after sunset is cool as a pot of green paint, and 
the moon reflects from the rippled surface like a stream of 
dollars. The shooting stars are but fireflies of the firmament. 
Late in September, I see the whole of the red-maple, — bright 
scarlet against the cold, green pines. The clear, bright scarlet 
leaves of the smooth sumac in many places are curled and 
drooping, hanging straight down, so as to make a funereal 
impression, reminding me of a red sash and a soldier''s funeral. 
They impress me quite as black crape similarly arranged, — 
the bloody plants. In mid-December the day is short ; it seems 
to be composed of two twilights merely, and there is some- 
times a peculiar, clear, vitreous, greenish sky in the west, as 
it were a molten gem."" 

"In this January thaw I hear the pleasant sound of run- 
ning water; here is my Italy, my heaven, my New England. 
I can understand why the Indians hereabouts placed heaven 
in the south-west, the soft south. The delicious, soft, spring- 
suggesting air! The sky, seen here and there through the 
wrack, bluish and greenish, and perchance with a vein of red 

[99] 

tofC. 



THOREAU 

in the west seems like the inside of a shell deserted by its 
tenant, into which I have crawled. What beauty in the run- 
ning brooks! What life! What society! The cold is merely 
superficial; it is summer still at the core, far, far within. It is 
in the cawing of the crow, the crowing of the cock, the warmth 
of the sun on our backs. I hear faintly the cawing of a crow 
far, far away, echoing from some unseen woodside, as if dead- 
ened by the spring-like vapor which the sun is drawing from 
the ground. It mingles with the slight murmur from the vil- 
lage, the sound of children at play, as one stream gently 
empties into another, and the wild and tame are one. What a 
delicious sound ! It is not merely crow calling to crow. If he 
has voice, I have ears. ... I think I never saw a more elysian 
blue than my shadow. I am turned into a tall, blue Persian 
from my cap to my boots, such as no mortal dye can produce, 
with an amethystine hatchet in my hand. 

"The holes in the pasture on Fairhaven Hill where rocks 
were taken out are now converted into perfect jewels. They 
are filled with water of crystalline transparency, through 
which I see to their emerald bottoms, paved with emerald. 
Even these furnish goblets and vases of perfect purity to hold 
the dews and rains; and what more agreeable bottom can we 
look to than this, which the earliest sun and moisture had 
tinged green.? I see an early grasshopper drowning in one; it 
looks like a fate to be envied: April wells call them: vases 
clean, as if enamelled. What wells can be more charming? 
You almost envy the wood-frogs and toads that hop amid 
such gems as fungi, some pure and bright enough for a breast- 

[100] 



SPRING AND AUTUMN 

pin. Out of every crevice between the dead leaves oozes some 
vehicle of color, the unspent wealth of the year which Nature 
is now casting forth, as if it were only to empty herself. And, 
now to your surprise, these ditches are crowded with mil- 
lions of little stars (Aster Tradescanti). Call them travellers' 
thoughts. What green, herbaceous, graminivorous thoughts 
the wood-frog must have! I wish that my thoughts were as 
reasonable as his." 

"I notice many little, pale-brown, dome-shaped puff-balls, 
puckered to a centre beneath, which emit their dust: when 
you pinch them, a smoke-like, brown dust (snufF-colored) 
issues from the orifice at their top, like smoke from a chim- 
ney. It is so fine and light that it rises into the air and is 
wafted away like smoke. They are low, oriental domes or 
mosques, sometimes crowded together in nests like a collec- 
tion of humble cottages on the moor, in the coal-pit or Nu- 
midian style. For there is suggested some humble hearth 
beneath, from which this smoke comes up; as it were, the 
homes of slugs and crickets. Amid the low and withering 
grass, their resemblance to rude, dome-shaped cottages where 
some humble but everlasting life is lived, pleases me not a 
little, and their smoke ascends between the legs of the herds 
and the traveller. I imagine a hearth and pot, and some snug 
but humble family passing its Sunday evening beneath each 
one, I locate there at once all that is simple and admirable 
in human life; there is no virtue which these roofs exclude. 
I imagine with what faith and contentment I could come 
home to them at evening." 

[101 ] 



THOREAU 

Thus social is Nature, if her lover bring a friendly heart. 
The love of beauty and truth which can light and cheer its 
possessor, not only in youth and health, but to the verge of 
the abyss, walked abroad with our Walden naturalist; for 
"Nature never did betray the heart that loved her." To be 
faithful in few things, to possess your soul in peace and make 
the best use of the one talent, is deemed an acceptable offer- 
ing, — omne devotum pro signrfico. 

"I am a stranger in your towns; I can winter more to my 
mind amid the shrub-oaks ; I have made arrangements to stay 
with them. The shrub-oak, lowly, loving the earth and spread- 
ing over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in 
winter, and rustling like leather shields; leaves firm and whole- 
some, clear and smooth to the touch. Tough to support the 
snow, not broken down by it, well-nigh useless to man, a sturdy 
phalanx hard to break through, product of New England's 
surface, bearing many striped acorns. Well-tanned leather- 
color on the one side, sun-tanned, color of colors, color of 
the cow and the deer; silver-downy beneath, turned toward 
the late bleached and russet fields. What are acanthus leaves 
and the rest to this, emblem of my winter condition? I love 
and could embrace the shrub-oak with its scaly garment of 
leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me, akin to 
winter thoughts and sunsets and to all virtue. Rigid as iron, 
clear as the atmosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet 
as a maiden, is the shrub-oak. I felt a positive yearning to 
one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at 
last, — I fell in love with a shrub-oak. Low, robust, hardy, 

[ 102 ] 



SPRING AND AUTUMN 

indigenous, well-known to the striped squirrel and the par- 
tridge and rabbit, what is Peruvian bark to your bark ? How 
many rents I owe to you, how many eyes put out, how many 
bleeding fingers! How many shrub-oak patches I have been 
through, winding my way, bending the twigs aside, guiding 
myself by the sun over hills and valleys and plains, resting in 
clear grassy spaces. I love to go through a patch of shrub- 
oaks in a bee line, — where you tear your clothes and put 
your eyes out." 

"Sometimes I would rather get a transient glimpse, a side 
view of a thing, than stand fronting to it, as these polypodys. 
The object I caught a glimpse of as I went by, haunts my 
thought a long time, is infinitely suggestive, arid I do not care 
to front it and scrutinize it; for I know that the thing that 
really concerns me is not there, but in my relation to that. 
That is a mere reflecting surface. Its influence is sporadic, 
wafted through the air to me. Do you imagine its fruit to 
stick to the back of its leaf all winter.? At this season, poly- 
pody is in the air. My thoughts are with them a long time 
after my body has passed. It is the cheerful community of the 
polypodys: are not wood-frogs the philosophers who walk in 
these groves.'*" 

In winter: "How completely a load of hay revives the 
memory of past summers. Summer in us is only a little dried, 
like it." The foul flanks of the cattle remind him how early 
it still is in the spring. He knows the date by his garment, 
and says on the twenty-eighth of April, "The twenty-seventh 
and to-day are weather for a half-thick single coat. This first 

[ 103 ] 



THOREAU 

off-coat warmth."" The first week of May, "The shadow of the 
cliff is like a dark pupil on the side of the hill. That cliff and 
its shade suggests dark eyes and eyelashes and overhanging 
brows. It is a leafy mist throughout the forest."" And with a 
rare comparison, "The green of the new grass, the last week 
in April, has the regularity of a parapet or rampart to a for- 
tress. It winds along the irregular lines of tussocks like the 
wall of China over hill and dale. As I was measuring, along 
the Marlboro' road, a fine little blue-slate butterfly fluttered 
over the chain. Even its feeble strength was required to fetch 
the year about. How daring, even rash. Nature appears, who 
sends out butterflies so early. Sardanapalus-like, she loves ex- 
tremes and contrasts."'"' (It was this day, April 28, 1856, that 
Thoreau first definitely theorized the succession of forest 
trees.) The sight and sound of the first humming-bird made 
him think he was in the tropics, in Demerara or Maracaibo. 

Shall we take an autumn walk, the first September week.? 

"Nature improves this, her last opportunity, to empty her 
lap of flowers. I turn Anthony ""s corner. It is an early Septem- 
ber afternoon, melting, warm, and sunny; the thousand of 
grasshoppers leaping before you, reflect gleams of light. A 
little distance off, the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army 
of Solidago nemoralis (gray golden-rod) between me and the 
sun. It spreads its legions over the dry plains now, as soldiers 
muster in the fall, — fruit of August and September sprung 
from the sun-dust. The fields and hills appear in their yellow 
uniform (its recurved standard, a little more than a foot high), 
marching to the holy land, a countless host of crusaders. The 

[ 104 ] 



SPRING AND AUTUMN 

earth -song of the cricket comes up through all, and ever and 
anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard. The dry, deserted 
fields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side 
on Nature's palette. You literally wade in flowers knee-deep, 
and now the moist banks and low bottoms are beginning to 
be abundantly sugared with the Aster Tradescanti. How in- 
effectual is the note of a bird now ! We hear it as if we heard 
it not and forget it immediately. The blackbirds were prun- 
ing themselves and splitting their throats in vain, trying to 
sing as the other day ; all the melody flew off" in splinters. By 
the first week of October, the hue of maturity has come even 
to that fine, silver-topped, feathery grass, two or three feet 
high in clumps, on dry places; I am riper for thought too. 
Every thing, all fruits and leaves, even the surfaces of stone 
and stubble, are all ripe in this air. The chickadees of late 
have winter ways, flocking after you." "Birds generally wear 
the russet dress of nature at this season [November 7], they 
have their fall no less than the plants; the bright tints de- 
part from their foliage of feathers, and they flit past like 
withered leaves in rustling flocks. The sparrow is a withered 
leaf. When the flower season is over, when the great company 
of flower-seekers have ceased their search, the fringed gentian 
raises its blue face above the withering grass beside the brooks 
for a moment, having at the eleventh hour made up its mind 
to join the planefs floral exhibition. Pieces of water are now 
reservoirs of dark indigo; as for the dry oak-leaves, all winter 
is their fall." 

"The tinkling notes of goldfinches and bobolinks which we 
[ 105 ] 



THOREAU 

hear in August are of one character, and peculiar to the sea- 
son. They are not voluminous flowers, but rather nuts of 
sound, ripened seeds of sound. It is the tinkling of ripened 
grains in Nature"'s basket; like the sparkle on water, a sound 
produced by friction on the crisped air. The cardinals {Lobelia 
cardinalis) are fluviatile, and stand along some river or brook 
like myself. It is the three o"'clock of the year when the Bidens 
Bechii (water marigold) begins to prevail. By mid-October, 
the year is acquiring a grizzly look from the climbing mikania, 
golden-rods, and Andropogon scoparius (purple wood-grass). 

And painted ducks^ too, often come to sail. 
And float amid the painted leaves. 

Surely, while geese fly overhead, we can live here as content- 
edly as they do at York Factory or Hudson's Bay. We shall 
perchance be as well provisioned and have as good society as 
they. Let us be of good cheer then, and expect the annual 
vessel which brings the spring to us, without fail. 

"Goodwin, the one-eyed Ajax, and other fishermen, who sit 
thus alone from morning to night at this season, must be 
greater philosophers than the shoemakers. The streets are 
thickly strewn with elm and button-wood and other leaves, 
Jeuille-viorte^ color. And what is acorn color? Is it not as 
good as chestnut.? Now (the second November week) for twin- 
kling light, reflected from unseen windows in the horizon in 
early twilight. The frost seems as if the earth was letting off" 
steam after the summer's work is over. If you do feel any fire 

1 Fawn color, dry-leaf color, w. e. c. 

[106] 



SPRING AND AUTUMN 

at this season out of doors, you may depend upon it, it is 
your own. November, eat-heart, — is that the name of it? A 
man will eat his heart in this, if in any month. The old she- 
wolf is nibbling at your very extremities. The frozen ground 
eating away the soles of your shoes is only typical of the Na- 
ture that gnaws your heart. Going through a partly frozen 
meadow near the river, scraping the sweet-gale, I am pleas- 
antly scented with its odoriferous fruit. The smallest {Asple- 
nium) ferns under a shelving rock, pinned on rosette-wise, 
looked like the head of a breast-pin. The rays from the bare 
twigs across the pond are bread and cheese to me. ... I see 
to the bone. See those bare birches prepared to stand the 
winter through on the bare hill-side. They never sing, ' Whafs 
this dull town to me.''"' The maples skirting the meadow (in 
dense phalanxes) look like light infantry advanced for a 
swamp fight. Ah! dear November, ye must be sacred to the 
Nine, surely." 

"If you would know what are my winter thoughts, look 
for them in the partridge's crop. The winter, cold and bound 
out as it is, is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog. 
I go budding like a partridge. Some lichenous thoughts still 
adhere to us, our cold immortal evergreens. Even our experi- 
ence is something like wintering in the pack, and we assume 
the spherical form of the marmot. We have peculiarly long 
and clear silvery twilights, morn and eve, with a stately with- 
drawn after-redness, — it is indigo-ey along the horizon. . . . 
Wachusett looks like a right whale over our bow, ploughing 
the continent with his flukes well down. He has a vicious look, 

[107] 



THOREAU 

as if he had a harpoon in him. All waters now seen through 
the leafless trees are blue as indigo, reservoirs of dark indigo 
among the general russet, reddish-brown, and gray. . 

"I rode home on a hay rigging with a boy who had been 
collecting a load of dry leaves for the hog-pen, — this, the 
third or fourth; two other boys asked leave to ride, with four 
large, empty box-traps, which they were bringing home from 
the woods. They had caught five rabbits this fall, baiting 
with an apple. Some fine straw-colored grasses, as delicate as 
the down on a young man's cheek, still rise above this crusted 
snow. I look over my shoulder upon an arctic scene. . . . The 
winters come now as fast as snow-flakes; there is really but 
one season in our hearts. The snow is like a uniform white 
napkin in many fields. I see the old, pale-faced farmer walk- 
ing beside his team (in the sled), with contented thoughts, 
for the five thousandth time. ^ This drama every day in the 
streets. This is the theatre I go to." 

1 This was old Hayden, a farm-laborer. 



[ 108 



PHILOSOPHY 



"La g^nie c'est la patience." 

BUFFON. 

"As he had kyked on the newe mone." 

Chaucer. 



CHAPTER VII 

PHILOSOPHY 

"It was summer, and now again it is winter. Nature loves this 
rhyme so well that she never tires of repeating it. So sweet 
and wholesome is the winter, so simple and moderate, so satis- 
factory and perfect, that her children will never weary of it. 
What a poem! an epic, in blank verse, inscribed with un- 
counted tinkling rhymes. It is solid beauty. It has been sub- 
jected to the vicissitudes of a million years of the gods, and 
not a single superfluous ornament remains. The severest and 
coldest of the immortal critics shot their arrows at and pruned 
it, till it cannot be amended. We might expect to find in the 
snows the footprint of a life superior to our own; of which no 
zoology takes cognizance; a life which pursued does not earth 
itself. The hollows look like a glittering shield set round 
with brilliants, as we go south-westward, through the Cas- 
sandra swamps, toward the declining sun, in the midst of 
which we walked. That beautiful frost-work, which so fre- 
quently in winter mornings is seen bristling about the throat 
of every breathing-hole in the earth'^s surface, is the frozen 
breath of the earth upon its beard. I knew what it was by my 
own experience. Some grass culms eighteen inches or two feet 
high, which nobody noticed, are an inexhaustible supply of 
slender ice wands set in the snow. The waving lines within 
the marsh-ice look sometimes just like some white, shaggy 
wolf-skin. The fresh, bright chestnut fruit of some lichens, 

[ 111 ] 



THOREAU 

glistening in moist winter days, brings life and immortality 
to light. The sight of the masses of yellow hastate leaves and 
flower-buds of the yellow lily, already four or six inches long 
at the bottom of the river, reminds me that Nature is pre- 
pared for an infinity of springs yet. How interesting a few 
clean, dry weeds on the shore a dozen rods off, seen distinctly 
against the smooth reflecting water between ice! 

"The surface of the snow everywhere in the fields, where it 
is hard blown, has a fine grain with low shelves, like a slate 
stone that does not split well; also, there are some shell-like 
drifts, more than once round. Over the frozen river only the 
bridges are seen peeping out from time to time like a dry 
eyelid. The damp, driving snow-flakes, when we turned partly 
round and faced them, hurt our eyeballs as if they had been 
dry scales: there are plenty of those shell-like drifts along 
the south sides of the walls now, and countless perforations, 
sometimes like the prows of vessels, or the folds of a white 
napkin or counterpane dropped over a bonneted head. Snow- 
flakes are the wheels of the storm chariots, the wreck of 
chariot wheels after a battle in the skies; these glorious 
spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor. And they all sing, 
melting as they sing, of the mysteries of the number six, six, 
six. He takes up the water of the sea in his hand, leaving the 
salt; he disperses it in mist through the skies; he recollects 
and sprinkles it like grain in six-rayed snowy stars over the 
earth, there to lie till it dissolves its bonds again. 

"I see great thimbleberry bushes, rising above the snow 
with still a rich, rank bloom on them as in July, — hypaethral 

[112] 



PHILOSOPHY 

mildew, elysian fungus! To see the bloom on a thimbleberry 
thus lasting into mid -winter! What a salve that would make 
collected and boxed! I should not be ashamed to have a 
shrub-oak for my coat-of-arms; I would fain have been wad- 
ing through the woods and fields and conversing with the 
sane snow. Might I aspire to praise the moderate nymph, 
Nature! I must be like her, — moderate. Who shall criticise 
that companion.? It is like the hone to the knife. There I 
get my underpinnings laid and repaired, cemented and lev- 
elled. There is my country club; we dine at the sign of the 
shrub-oak, the new Albion House. 

"A little flock of red-polls {Linaria minor) is busy picking 
the seeds of the pig-weed in the garden, this driving snow- 
storm. Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, 
no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the 
spring rolled up; the summer is all packed in them. Again 
and again I congratulate myself on my so-called poverty. 
How can we spare to be abroad in the morning red; to see 
the forms of the leafless eastern trees against the clear sky, 
and hear the cocks crow, when a thin low mist hangs over 
the ice and frost in meadows? When I could sit in a cold 
chamber, muffled in a cloak, each evening till Thanksgiving 
time, warmed by my own thoughts, the world was not so 
much with me. When I have only a rustling oak-leaf, or the 
faint metallic cheep of a tree-sparrow, for variety in my 
winter walk, my life becomes continent and sweet as the 
kernel of a nut. Show me a man who consults his genius, and 
you have shown me a man who cannot be advised. . . . Going 

[ 113 ] 



THOREAU 

along the Nut Meadow, or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the 
sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture, I 
feel like studying them again as a relisher or tonic, to make 
life go down and digest well, as we use pepper and vinegar 
and salads. They are a sort of winter greens, which we gather 
and assimilate with our eyes. The flattened boughs of the 
white-pine rest stratum above stratum like a cloud, a green 
mackerel-sky, hardly reminding me of the concealed earth so 
far beneath. They are like a flaky crust to the earth ; my eyes 
nibble the piney sierra which makes the horizon ""s edge, as a 
hungry man nibbles a cracker. . . . That bird (the hawk) 
settles with confidence on the white-pine top, and not upon 
your weather-cock; that bird will not be poultry of yours, 
lays no eggs for you, for ever hides its nest. Though willed or 
wild, it is not wilful in its wildness. The unsympathizing man 
regards the wildness of some animals, their strangeness to 
him, as a sin. No hawk that soars and steals our poultry is 
wilder than genius; and none is more persecuted, or above per- 
secution. It can never be poet-laureate, to say 'pretty Poll,' 
and 'Poll want a cracker.'" 

In these sayings may his life best be sought. It is an auto- 
biography with the genuine brand, — it is unconscious. How 
he was affected by the seasons, who walked with them as a 
familiar friend ! thinking thus aloud the thoughts which they 
brought; associations in linked sweetness long drawn out; 
dear and delightful as memories or hopes ! He had few higher 
sources of inspiration than night, and having given a prayer 
of his to the moon, and now a saying, "The moon comes out 

[114] 



PHILOSOPHY 

of the mackerel cloud/ and the traveller rejoices""; let us see 
what one evening furnishes: it is that of September 7, 1851. 

"The air is very still; a fine sound of crickets, but not loud. 
The woods and single trees are heavier masses than in the 
spring; night has more allies. I hear only a tree-toad or song- 
sparrow singing at long intervals, as in spring. The most 
beautiful thing in Nature is the sun reflected from a tearful 
cloud. Now in the fields I see the white streak of the Neottia 
in the twilight. The whippoorwill sings far off. I hear the 
sound from time to time of a leaping fish or a frog, or a 
muskrat or a turtle. I know not how it is that this universal 
cricket's creak should sound thus regularly intermittent, as if 
for the most part they fell in with one another and creaked 
in time, making a certain pulsing sound, a sort of breathing 
or panting of all Nature. You sit twenty feet above the still 
river, see the sheeny pads and the moon and some bare tree- 
tops in the distant horizon. Those bare tree-tops add greatly 
to the wildness. 

"Lower down I see the moon in the water as bright as in 
the heavens, only the water-bugs disturb its disk, and now I 
catch a faint glassy glare from the whole river surface, which 
before was simply dark. This is set in a frame of double dark- 
ness in the east; i.e., the reflected shore of woods and hills 
and the reality, the shadow and the substance bi-partite, an- 
swering to each. I see the northern lights over my shoulder 

1 The mackerel-sky is named from the peculiar bluish-whitish tint of the 
shutter-leaved clouds that spread like vast mother-of-pearl bUnds over 
heaven, w. e. c. 

[ 115 j 



THOREAU 

to remind me of the Esquimaux, and that they are still my 
contemporaries on this globe; that they, too, are taking their 
walks on another part of the planet, in pursuit of seals per- 
chance. It was so soft and velvety a light as contained a thou- 
sand placid days recently put to rest in the bosom of the 
water. So looked the North-twin Lake in the Maine woods. 
It reminds me of placid lakes in the mid-noon of Indian 
summer days, but yet more placid and civilized, suggesting a 
higher cultivation, as wildness ever does, which aeons of sum- 
mer days have gone to make, like a summer day seen far away. 
All the effects of sunlight, with a softer tone, and all the still- 
ness of the water and air superadded, and the witchery of the 
hour. What gods are they that require so fair a vase of gleam- 
ing water to their prospect in the midst of the wild woods by 
night.'' 

"Else why this beauty allotted to night, a gem to sparkle 
in the zone of Nox f They are strange gods now out ; methinks 
their names are not in any mythology. The light that is in 
night, a smile as in a dream on the face of the sleeping lake, 
enough light to show what we see, any more would obscure 
these objects. I am not advertised of any deficiency of light. 
The faint sounds of birds dreaming aloud in the night, the 
fresh cool air and sound of the wind rushing over the rocks 
remind me of the tops of mountains. In this faint, hoary light 
all fields are like a mossy rock and remote from the culti- 
vated plains of day. It is all one with Caucasus, the slightest 
hill-pasture. 

"Now the fire in the north increases wonderfully, not shoot- 
[116] 



PHILOSOPHY 

ing up so much as creeping along, like a fire on the moun- 
tains of the north, seen afar in the night. The Hyperborean 
gods are burning brush, and it spread, and all the hoes in 
heaven could n't stop it. It spread from west to east, over the 
crescent hill. Like a vast fiery worm it lay across the north- 
ern sky, broken into many pieces; and each piece, with rain- 
bow colors skirting it, strove to advance itself towards the 
east, worm -like on its own annular muscles. It has spread into 
the choicest wood-lots of Valhalla; now it shoots up like a 
single, solitary watch-fire, or burning brush, or where it ran 
up a pine-tree like powder, and still it continues to gleam 
here and there like a fat stump in the burning, and is reflected 
in the water. And now I see the gods by great exertions have 
got it under, and the stars have come out without fear in 
peace. Though no birds sing, the crickets vibrate their shrill 
and stridulous cymbals in the alders of the causeway, those 
minstrels especially engaged for night's quire." 

He saw the great in the little : the translucent leaves of the 
Andromeda calyctdata seemed in January, with their soft red, 
more or less brown, as he walked towards the sun, like cathe- 
dral windows; and he spoke of the cheeks and temples of the 
soft crags of the sphagnum. The hubs on birches are regular 
cones, as if they might be volcanoes in outline; and the small 
cranberries occupy some little valley a foot or two over, be- 
tween two mountains of sphagnum (that dense, cushion-like 
moss that grows in swamps). He says distant lightning is like 
veins in the eye. Of that excellent nut, the chestnut, "the 
whole upper slopes of the nuts are covered with the same 

[117] 



THOREAU 

hoary wool as the points."" A large, fresh stone-heap, eight or 
ten inches above water, is quite sharp, like Teneriffe, These 
comparisons to him were realities, not sports of the pen: to 
elevate the so-called little into the great, with him, was 
genius.^ In that sense he was no humorist. He sees a gull's 
wings, that seem almost regular semicircles, like the new 
moon. Some of the bevelled roofs of the houses on Cape Ann 
are so nearly flat that they reminded him of the low brows of 
monkeys. The enlarged sail of the boat suggests a new power, 
like a Grecian god . . . Ajacean. The boat is like a plough 
drawn by a winged bull. He asks, "Are there no purple re- 
flections from the culms of thought in my mind?" thinking 
of the colors of the poke-stem. In a shower he feels the first 
drop strike the right slope of his nose, and run down the ra- 
vine there, and says, "Such is the origin of rivers," and sees 
a wave whose whole height, "from the valley between to the 
top," was fifteen inches. He thus practically illustrates his 
faith, — how needless to travel for wonders; they lie at your 
feet ; the seeing eye must search intently. The Wayland bird- 
stuffer shoots a meadow-hen, a Virginia rail, a stormy petrel 
and the little auk, in Sudbury meadows. 

He wished so to live as to derive his satisfactions and in- 
spirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena; 
so that what his senses hourly perceived, his daily walk, the 
conversation of his neighbors, might inspire him; and he 
wished to dream of no heaven but that which lay about him. 

1 I remember the exact spot where he spoke of this. He was then in his 
last sickness, and said that he could never feel warm. w. e. c. 

[ 118 J 



PHILOSOPHY 

Seeing how impatient, how rampant, how precocious were the 
osiers in early spring, he utters the prayer, "May I ever be 
in as good spirits as a willow. They never say die." The charm 
of his journal must consist in a certain greenness, thorough 
freshness, and not in maturity. "Here, I cannot afford to be 
remembering what I said, did, my scurf cast off, — but what 
I am and aspire to become." Those annoyed by his hardness 
should remember that "the flowing of the sap under the dull 
rinds of the trees is a tide which few suspect." The same ob- 
ject is ugly or beautiful according to the angle from which 
you view it. He went to the rocks by the pond in April to 
smell the catnep, and always brought some home for the cat, 
at that season. To truly see his character, you must "see with 
the unworn sides of your eye." Once he enlarges a little on an 
offer he did not accept of a passenger. He had many: genial 
gentlemen of all sizes felt ready to walk or sail with him, and 
he usually accepted them, sometimes two in one. On this oc- 
casion he declines: — 

"This company is obliged to make a distinction between 
dead freight and passengers: I will take almost any amount 
of freight for you cheerfully, — anything, my dear sir, but 
yourself. You are a heavy fellow, but I am well disposed. If 
you could go without going, then you might go. There ""s the 
captain's state-room, empty to be sure, and you say you 
could go in the steerage: I know very well that only your 
baggage would be dropped in the steerage, while you would 
settle down into that vacant recess. Why, I am going, not 
staying; I have come on purpose to sail, to paddle away from 

[119] 



THOREAU 

such as you, and you have waylaid me on the shore. ... If 
I remember aright it was only on condition that you were 
asJced, that you were to go with a man one mile or twain. I 
could better carry a heaped load of meadow mud and sit on 
the thole-pins.'" 

He believed that "we must not confound man with man. 
We cannot conceive of a greater difference than that between 
the life of one man and that of another." 

" It is possible for a man wholly to disappear and be merged 
in his manners,"" He thought a man of manners was an insect 
in a tumbler. But genius had evanescent boimdaries like an 
altar from which incense rises. 

"Our stock in life, our real estate, is that amount of 
thought which we have had, and which we have thought out. 
The ground we have thus created is for ever pasturage for 
our thoughts. I am often reminded that, if I had bestowed 
on me the wealth of Croesus, my aims must still be the same 
and my means essentially the same. The art of life, of a poet's 
life, is, not having anything to do, to do something. Improve 
the suggestion of each object however humble, however slight 
and transient the provocation; what else is there to be im- 
proved? You must try a thousand themes before you find 
the right one, as nature makes a thousand acorns to get one 
oak. Both for bodily and mental health court the present. 
Embrace health wherever you find her. None but the kind 
gods can make me sane. If only they will let their south 
wind blow on me: I ask to be melted. You can only ask of 
the metals to be tender to the fire that melts them. To 

[ 120 ] 



PHILOSOPHY 

naught else can they be tender. Only he can be trusted with 
gifts, who can present a face of bronze to expectations." 

At times, he asked: "Why does not man sleep all day as 
well as all night, it seems so very easy. For what is he awake?" 
"Do lichens or fungi grow on you.'* The luxury of wisdom! 
the luxury of virtue! are there any intemperate in these 
things?" "Oh such thin skins, such crockery as I have to deal 
with! Do they not know that I can laugh?" "Why do the 
mountains never look so fair as from my native fields?" "Who 
taught the oven-bird to conceal her nest?" He states a fa- 
miliar fact, showing that the notion of a thing can be taken 
for the thing, literally: "I have convinced myself that I saw 
smoke issuing from the chimney of a house, which had not 
been occupied for twenty years, — a small bluish, whitish 
cloud, instantly dissipated." Like other scribes, he wishes he 
^^ could buy at the sliops some kind of India-rubber that would 
rub out at once all that in my writing which it now costs me so 
many perusals, so many months, if not years, and so much re- 
luctance to erase.'''' His temperament is so moral, his least 
observation will breed a sermon, or a water-worn fish rear 
him to Indian heights of philosophy: "How many springs 
shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bos- 
toniens'is) floating dead on our river? Will not Nature select 
her types from a new font? The vignette of the year. This 
earth which is spread out like a map around me is but the 
lining of my inmost soul exposed. In me is the sucker that I 
see. No wholly extraneous object can compel me to recognize 
it. I am guilty of suckers. . . . The red-bird which I saw on 

[121 ] 



THOREAU 

my companion''s string on election-days, I thought but the 
outmost sentinel of the wild immortal camp, of the wild and 
dazzling infantry of the wilderness. The red-bird which is the 
last of nature is but the first of God. We condescend to climb 
the crags of earth." 

He believes he is soothed by the sound of the rain, because 
he is allied to the elements. The sound sinks into his spirit 
as the water into the earth, reminding him of the season 
when snow and ice will be no more. He advises you to be not 
in haste amid your private affairs. Consider the turtle: a 
whole summer, June, July, and August are not too good, not 
too much to hatch a turtle in. Another of his questions is : 
"What kind of understanding was there between the mind 
that determined these leaves of the black willow should hang 
on during the winter, and that of the worm that fastened a 
few of these leaves to its cocoon in order to disguise it?" As 
an answer may be found the following : " It was long ago in a 
full senate of all intellects determined how cocoons had best 
be suspended; kindred mind with mind that admires and ap- 
proves decided it so. The mind of the universe which we share 
has been intended on each particidar point."^ Thus persevering, 
— and, as he says of a dwelling on the Cape, he knocked all 
round the house at five doors in succession, — so he at the 
great out-doors of nature, where he was accommodated. 

^' Chide me not, laborious band, 
For the idle flowers I brought ; 
Every aster in my hand 

Goes home loaded with a thought." 
[ 122 ] 



PHILOSOPHY 

His fineness of perceiving, his delicacy of touch, has rarely 
been surpassed with pen or pencil, a fineness as unpremedi- 
tated as successful. For him the trout glances like a film from 
side to side and under the bank. The pitch oozing from pine 
logs is one of the beautiful accidents that attend on man's 
works, instead of a defilement. Darby's oak stands like an 
athlete, it is an agony of strength. Its branches look like 
gray lightning stereotyped on the sky. The lichens on the 
pine remind him of the forest warrior and his shield adhering 
to him. 

In spring he notices pewee days and April showers. The 
mountains are the pastures to which he drives his thoughts, 
on their 20th of May. So the storm has its flashing van fol- 
lowed by the long dropping main body, with at very long in- 
tervals an occasional firing or skirmishing in the rear, or on the 
flank. "The lightning, like a yellow spring-flower, illumines 
the dark banks of the clouds. Some aestrum stings the cloud 
that she darts headlong against the steeples, and bellows 
hollowly, making the earth tremble. It is the familiar note 
of another warbler echoing amid the roofs." He compares the 
low universal twittering of the chip-birds, at daybreak in 
June, to the bursting bead on the surface of the uncorked 
day. If he wishes for a hair for his compass-sight, he must go 
to the stable; but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to 
the road. He muses over an ancient muskrat skull (found be- 
hind the wall of Adams's shop), and is amused with the notion 
of what grists have come to this mill. Now the upper and 
nether stones fall loosely apart, and the brain chamber where 

[ 123 ] 



THOREAU 

the miller lodged is now empty (passing under the portcullis 
of the incisors), and the windows are gone. The opening of 
the first asters, he thinks, makes you fruitfully meditative; 
helps condense your thoughts like the mildews in the after- 
noon. He is pretty sure to find a plant which he is shown 
from abroad, or hears of, or in any way becomes interested in. 
The cry of hounds he lists to, as it were a distant natural 
horn in the clear resonant air. He says that fire is the most 
tolerable third party. When he puts the hemlock boughs on 
the blaze, the rich salt crackling of its leaves is like mustard 
to the ear; dead trees love the fire. The distant white-pines 
over the Sanguinetto ^ seem to flake into tiers ; the whole tree 
looks like an open cone. The pond reminds him, looking from 
the mill-dam, of a weight wound up; and when the miller 
raised the gate, what a smell of gun- wash or sulphur! "I who 
never partake of the sacrament made the more of it.*" The 
solitude of Truro is as sweet as a flower. He drank at every 
cooler spring in his walk in a blazing July, and loved to eye 
the bottom there, with its pebbly Caddis-worm cases, or its 
white worms, or perchance a luxurious frog cooling himself 
next his nose. The squirrel withdraws to his eye by his aerial 
turnpikes. "The roof of a house at a distance, in March, is a 
mere gray scale, diamond shape, against the side of a hill.'" 
"If I were to be a frog-hawk for a month, I should soon have 
known something about the frogs." He thinks most men can 
keep a horse, or keep up a certain fashionable style of living, 

1 A name given by Mr. Emerson to the little brook running under the rail- 
road and to Baker Farm, from his woodland meadow or swamp, w. e. c. 

[ 124 ] 



PHILOSOPHY 

but few indeed can keep up great expectations. He improves 
every opportunity to go into a grist-mill, any excuse to see 
its cobweb-tapestry, such as putting questions to the miller, 
while his eye rests delighted on the cobwebs above his head 
and perchance on his hat. 

So he walked and sang his melodies in the pure country, in 
the seclusion of the field. All forms and aspects of night and 
day were glad and memorable to him, whose thoughts were 
as pure and innocent as those of a guileless maiden. Shall 
they not be studied ? 

"I will give my son to eat 
Best of Pan's immortal meat. 
Bread to eat, and juice to drink ; 
So the thoughts that he shall think 
Shall not be forms of stars, but stars. 
Not pictures pale, but Jove and Mars. 



The Indian cheer, the frosty skies. 
Rear purer wits, inventive eyes. 

In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong 
Adhere like this foundation strong. 
The insanity of towns to stem 
With simpleness for stratagem." 

Emerson's Monadnoc. 

If it is difficult (to some) to credit, it is no less certain that 

Thoreau would indulge himself in a rhapsody, — given the 

right topic, something the writer cordially/ appreciated. In 

speech or with the pen, the eloquent vein being touched, the 

spring of discourse flowed rapidly, as on this subject of the 

Corner-road: — 

[125 1 



THOREAU 

" Now I yearn for one of those old, meandering, dry, unin- 
habited roads which lead away from towns, which lead us 
away from temptation, which conduct to the outside of the 
earth over its uppermost crust; where you may forget in what 
country you are travelling; where no farmer can complain 
that you are treading down his grass; no gentleman who has 
recently constructed a seat in the country that you are tres- 
passing; on which you can go off at half-cock and wave adieu 
to the village; along which you may travel like a pilgrim 
going no- whither; where travellers are not often to be met, 
where my spirit is free, where the walls and flowers are not 
cared for, where your head is more in heaven than your feet 
are on earth; which have long reaches, where you can see the 
approaching traveller half a mile off, and be prepared for 
him; not so luxuriant a soil as to attract men; some stump 
and root fences, which do not need attention ; where travellers 
have no occasion to stop, but pass along and leave you to 
your thoughts; where it makes no odds which way you face, 
whether you are going or coming, whether it is morning or 
evening, mid-noon or midnight; where earth is cheap enough 
by being public; where you can walk and think with least 
obstruction, there being nothing to measure progress by; 
where you can pace when your breast is full, and cherish your 
moodiness; where you are not in false relations with men, are 
not dining or conversing with them ; by which you may go to 
the uttermost parts of the earth. 

"Sometimes it is some particular half-dozen rods which I 
wish to find myself pacing over; as where certain airs blow, 

[ 126 ] 



PHILOSOPHY 

there my life will come to me; methinks, like a hunter, I lie 
in wait for it. When I am against this bare promontory of a 
huckleberry hill, then forsooth my thoughts will expand. Is 
it some influence, as a vapor which exhales from the ground, 
or something in the gales which blow there, or in all things 
there brought together, agreeably to my spirit .? The walls 
must not be too high, imprisoning me, but low, with numerous 
gaps. The trees must not be too numerous nor the hills too 
near, bounding the view; nor the soil too rich, attracting at- 
tention to the earth. It must simply be the way and the life, 
— a way that was never known to be repaired, nor to need 
repair, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. I cannot 
walk habitually in those ways that are likely to be repaired, 
for sure it was the devil only that wore them; never by the 
heel of thinkers (of thought) were they worn. The saunterer 
wears out no road, even though he travel on it, and therefore 
should pay no highway (or rather lowway) tax; he may be 
taxed to construct a higher way than that men travel. A 
way which no geese defile or hiss along it, but only sometimes 
their wild brethren fly far overhead; which the kingbird and 
the swallow twitter over, and the song-sparrow sings on its 
rails; where the small red butterfly is at home on the yarrow, 
and no boy threatens it with imprisoning hat, — there I can 
walk and stalk and plod. Which nobody but Jonas Potter 
travels beside me; where no cow but his is tempted to linger 
for the herbage by its side; where the guideboard is fallen, 
and now the hand points to heaven significantly, to a Sud- 
bury and Marlboro' in the skies. That 's a road I can travel, 

[ 127 ] 



THOREAU 

that the particular Sudbury I am bound for, six miles an 
hour, or two, as you please; and few there be that enter 
therein. Here I can walk and recover the lost child that I 
am, without any ringing of a bell. Where there was nothing 
ever discovered to detain a traveller, but all went through 
about their business; where I never 'passed the time of day' 
with any, — indifferent to me were the arbitrary divisions of 
time; where Tullus Hostilius might have disappeared, at any 
rate has never been seen, — the road to the Corner! 

"The ninety and nine acres you go through to get there, 
— I would rather see it again, though I saw it this morning, 
than Gray's Churchyard. The road whence you may hear a 
stake-driver, or whippoorwill, or quail, in a midsummer day. 
Oh, yes! a quail comes nearest to the Gum-c bird^ heard 
there. Where it would not be sport for a sportsman to go. 
The Mayweed looks up in my face there, the pale lobelia and 
the Canada snap-dragon ; a Httle hardback and meadow-sweet 
peep over the fence; nothing more serious to obstruct the 
view, and thimbleberries are the food of thought (before 
the drought), along by the walls. A road that passes over the 
Height-of-land, between earth and heaven, separating those 
streams which flow earthward from those which flow heaven- 
ward. 

"It is those who go to Brighton and to market that wear 
out all the roads, and they should pay all the tax. The de- 
liberate pace of a walker never made a road the worse for 
travelling on, — on the promenade deck of the world, an out- 

1 One of Thoreau's names for some bird, so named by the farmers, w. e. c. 

[ 128 ] 



PHILOSOPHY 

side passenger; where I have freedom in my thought, and in 
my soul am free. Excepting the omnipresent butcher with his 
calf-cart, followed by a distracted and anxious cow; or the 
inattentive stranger baker, whom no weather detains, that 
does not bake his bread in this hemisphere, and therefore it 
is dry before it gets here! Ah! there is a road where you 
might adventure to fly, and make no preparations till the time 
comes ; where your wings will sprout if anywhere, where your 
feet are not confined to earth. An airy head makes light walk- 
ing, when I am not confined and baulked by the sight of 
distant farmhouses, which I have not gone past. I must be 
fancy free; I must feel that, wet or dry, high or low, it is the 
genuine surface of the planet, and not a little chip-dirt or a 
compost heap, or made land, or redeemed. A thinker's weight 
is in his thought, not in his tread; when he thinks freely, his 
body weighs nothing. He cannot tread down your grass, 
farmers!" 

''Thus far to-day your favors reach^ 
O fair appeasing presences ! 
Ye taught my lips a single speech 
And a thousand silences." ^ 

iFrom Emerson's "Merops," — the unspoken, perhaps, or unspeakable. 



[ 129 1 



WALKS AND TALKS 



"Absents within the hne conspire." 

Vaughan. 

"What I have reaped in my journey is, as it were, a small contentment 
in a never-contenting subject ; a bitter-pleasant taste of a sweet-seasoned 
sour.i AU in all, what I found was more than ordinary rejoicing in an ex- 
traordinary sorrow of delights." 

LiTHGOW. 

"What is it to me that I can write these Table-Talks ? Others have more 
property in them than I have ; they may reap the benefit, I have had only 
the pain. Nor should I have known that I had ever thought at all, but that 
I am reminded of it by the strangeness of my appearance, and my unfit- 
ness for anything else." 

Hazlitt. 

"Not mine the boast of countless herds, 
Nor purple tapestries, nor treasured gold ; 

But mine the peaceful spirit. 
And the dear Muse, and pleasant wine 
Stored in Boeotian urns." 

Bacchylides. (Translated by Percival.J 

EDITOR'S NOTE. We have now come to the extraneous matter introduced by Charming while 
his book was printing, to increase its size, — literal padding, yet of no common quality. Intro- 
ducing it, he framed these mottoes to fit his "Country Walking," from which it was taken, and to 
fit his own case as he understood it. The quotations from Vaughan and Hazlitt show this 7nore par- 
ticularly; the "absents" in 1873 being Thoreau, who had cheerfully contributed to the suppressed 
book. The quotatio7i from Hazlitt applies rather closely to Channing's conception of his own char- 
acter and fortunes in 1853, when the " Country Walking " was written. To the paradoxical quota- 
tion from Lithgow, Channing added the note given below. Only about half the original manu- 
script of " Country Walking" teas used in this book. I have the original draft in pencil. It was 
all carefully copied out by Channing and the copy submitted to Mr. Emerson, from, whose col- 
lection of manuscripts it came to me, but only in part. What became of the rest I know not; but 
suppose it remained in Channing's hands, and was used by him to print from in 1873. He com- 
municated to me then the general fact that he had taken the walks described, with Emerson and 
Thoreau, and that his description of them passed from hand to hand among the three for revi- 
sion. I suppose this loas strictly true, so long as the plan remained to print the whole as a book; 
but when that was given up, for what reason I cannot say, the details of the affair seem to have 
been forgotten by Mr. Emerson. At least, he never spoke of them to me, although he complained 
that Channing had done ill to print things from his manuscript which he had not yet given to the 
world. Perhaps he may havefancied— his memory even then being somewhat impaired— that his 
friend had secretly copied them; but that cannot have been the case. F. B. S. 

^Emerson was never in the least contented. This made walking or company to him a penance. 
The Future,— that was the terrible Gorgon face that turned the Present into "a thousand belly- 
aches." " When shall I be perfect? when shall I be moral? when shall I be this and that? when 
will the really good rhyme get ivritten ?" Here is the Emerson colic. Thoreau had a like disease. 
Men are said never to be satisfied. W. E. C. 



CHAPTER VIII 

WALKS AND TALKS 

To furnish a more familiar idea of Thoreau''s walks and talks 
with his friends and their locality, some reports of them are 
furnished for convenience in the interlocutory form. 

A WALK TO SECOND DIVISION BROOKi 

E. And so you are ready for a walk? 

''Hence sand and dust are shak'd for witnesses." 

Vaughan. 

C. When was I ever not.'' Where shall we go.? To Conan- 
tum or White Pond, or is the Second Division our business 
for this afternoon.? 

E. As you will. Under your piloting I feel partially safe; 
but not too far, not too much. Brevity is the sole of walking. 

1 The citations here made from Emerson's journal begin in May, 1843, but 
are mostly from that of 1848. The first one relates to a walk in early spring 
in the south-west direction from Concord village. The conversation is partly 
oral, and mostly a record of the years 1848-50, so far as Emerson's journal 
is the source ; the citations from Thoreau's journals are from that of 1851 
largely ; but extend to and through 1853-54, and go on with occasional 
passages to 1860; after which Thoreau wrote but little in his completed 
journal. WTien it is possible to distinguish between the speakers, I have 
marked Emerson's passages "E." and Thoreau's "T.," while Channing's 
interpellations, poetic quotations, and descriptions go in under "C." The 
"Minott" here mentioned was the friend of the three walkers, George by 
name, who lived near Emerson and died a few months before Thoreau in 
1862. He has been described by all three ; by Channing under the fanciful 
name of "Angelo," and again in verse by his own Christian name. f. b. s. 

[ 133 ] 



THOREAU 

T. And yet all true walking, all virtuous walking, is a 
travail. The season is proper to the Brook. I am in the mood 
to greet the Painted Tortoise; nor must I fail to examine the 
buds of the marsh-marigold, now, I think, somewhat swollen. 
But few birds have come in, though Minott says he has heard 
a bluebird. 

C. Did he ask his old question, — "Seen a robin?" George 
Minott is native and to the manor born; was never away from 
home but once, when he was drafted as a soldier in the last 
war with England, and went to Dorchester Heights; and he 
has never ridden on a rail. What do you make of him? 

E. He makes enough of himself. The railroad has proved 
too great a temptation to most of our farmers; the young men 
have a foreign air their fathers never had. We shall not boast 
of Mars Ipse, Grass-and-Oats, or Oats-and-Grass, and old 
Verjuice in the next generation. These rudimental Saxons 
have the air of pine-trees and apple-trees, and might be their 
sons got between them ; conscientious laborers, with a science 
born within them, from out the sap-vessels of their savage 
sires. This savagery is native with man, and polished New 
England cannot do without it. That makes the charm of 
grouse-shooting and deer-stalking to these Lord Breadalbanes, 
walking out of their doors a hundred miles to the sea on their 
own property; or Dukes of Sutherland getting off at last 
their town coat, and donning their hunter's gear, exasperated 
by saloons and dress-boots. 

C. Let me rest a fraction on this bridge. 

E. I am your well-wisher in that. The manners of water are 
[ 134 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

beautiful. "As for beauty I need not look beyond my oar's 
length for my fill of it." I do not know whether you used the 
expression with design the other day; but my eye rested on 
the charming play of light on the water, which you were 
slowly striking with your paddle. I fancied I had never seen 
such color, such transparency, such eddies. It was the hue of 
Rhine wines, it was gold and green and chestnut and hazel, 
in bewildering succession and relief, without cloud or confu- 
sion. A little canoe with three men or boys in it put out from 
a creek and paddled down stream ; and, afar or near, we paid 
homage to the Blessed Water, inviolable, magical, whose na- 
ture is Beauty; which instantly began to play its sweet games, 
all circles and dimples and lovely gleaming motions, — always 
Ganges, the Sacred River, — and which cannot be desecrated 
or made to forget itself. 

C. 'Tor marble sweats, and rocks have tears." 

Hark! Was that the bluebird's warble.? 

E. I could not hear it, as now cometh the seventh abomi- 
nation, the train. And yet it looks like a new phenomenon, 
though it has appeared at the same hour each day for these 
ten years since 1843. 

C. Already the South Acton passengers squeeze their 
bundles, and the member of the legislature hastens to drain 
the last drop of vulgar gossip from the Ginger-beer paper 
before he leaves the cars to fodder and milk his kine. I trust 
that in heaven will be no cows. They are created, apparently, 
to give the farmer a sport between planting and harvest, the 

[ 135] 



THOREAU 

joy of haying, dust, grime, and tan, diluted by sunstrokes. 

E. The cause of cows is, that they make good walking where 
they feed. In the paths of the thicket the best engineer is 
the cow. 

T. We cross where the high bank will give us a view over 
the river at Clam-shell, and where I may possibly get an 
arrow-head from this Concord Kitchen-modding. 

C. A singular proclivity, thou worshipper of Indians! for 
arrow-heads; and I presume, like certain other worships, un- 
curable ! 

T. Apply thy Procrustes-bed to my action, and permit me 
to continue my search. They speak of Connecticuts and Hud- 
sons: our slow little stream, in its spring overflow, draws on 
the surtout of greater rivers; a river, — fair, solitary path, — 
the one piece of real estate belonging to the walker, unfenced, 
undeeded, sacred to musquash and pickerel, and to George 
Melvin, gunner; more by the token he was drowned in it. 

C. Are not those gulls, gleaming like spots of intense white 
light, far away on the dark bosom of the meadows.? 

T. Yes, indeed! they come from the sea each spring-over- 
flow, and go a-fishing like Goodwin. See ! I have got a quartz 
arrow-head, — and perfect. This bank is made of the clams 
baked by the Indians. Let us look a moment at the minnows 
as we cross the brook; I can see their shadows on the yellow 
sand much clearer than themselves, and can thus count the 
number of their fins. I wonder if the Doctor ever saw a min- 
now. In his report on reptiles, he says he has never seen but 
one Hylodes Pickeringii, in a dried state. It is well also to 

[136] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

report upon what you have not seen. He never troubled him- 
self with looking about in the country. 

C. The poet more than the savant marries man to nature. 
I wish we had some fuller word to express this fine picture we 
see from Clam-shell bank: Mnde was the old English word. 

E. [^September 5, 15^7.] Kinde only filled half the range of 
our fine Latin word. But nothing designates that Power which 
seems to work for beauty alone; whilst man, as you say, works 
only for use. 

C. See, O man of Nature, yon groups of weather-stained 
houses we now o'ertop. There live some Christians, put away 
on Life's plate like so many rinds of cheese; single women 
living out of all villages, in the quiet of fields and woods. 
There descend, like dew on flowers, the tranquillizing years 
into their prickly life-petals. Save the rats scrabbling along 
the old plastering, the sawing of pluvial pea-hens, or the low 
of the recuperating cow, — what repose! And in the midst 
such felons of destiny ! What avails against hot-bread, cream- 
of -tartar, and Oriental-Company tea, — with an afternoon nap.? 
"O mother Ida^ hearken ere I die." 

I have met CEnones whom I could have spared better than 
these horn-pouts of gossip. Is there a fixed sum of hyson al- 
lotted to each sibyl? 

E. ''Only a learned and a manly soul 

I purposed her, that should with even powers 
The rock, the spindle, and the shears control 
Of Destiny, — and spin her own free hours." 

C. The bluebird, sir! the first bluebird! there he sits and 
[ 137 ] 



THOREAU 

warbles. Dear bird of Spring! first speech of the original 
Beauty, — first note in the annual concert of Love! why 
soundest thy soft and plaintive warble on my ear like the 
warning of a mournful Past? As the poet Crashaw sings, if 
not of the new birds: — 

"We saw thee in thy balmy nest, 
Bright dawn of our eternal day ! 
We saw thine eyes break from their East, 
And chase the trembling shades away : 
We saw thee, — and we blest the sight, — 
We saw thee by thine own sweet light. 

She sings thy tears asleep, and dips 

Her kisses in thy weeping eye ; 
She spreads the red leaves of thy lips, 

That in their buds yet blushing lie : 
She 'gainst those mother diamonds tries 
The points of her young eagle's eyes." 

Excuse soliloquy. 

E. Go on, go on: I can hear the bluebird just the same. 

C. I am glad we are at the sand-bank. Radiantly here the 
brook parts across the shallows its ever-rippling tresses of 
golden light. It steals away my battered senses as I gaze 
therein; and, if I remember me, 'tis in some murmuring 

line: — 

*^Tlius swam away my thoughts on thee. 
And in thy joyful ecstasy 
Flowed with thy waters to thy sea." 

E. Let us to the ancient woods !^ I say, let us value the 

1 The date of this walk in the woods was October, X848. 
[138] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

woods, — they are full of solicitations. My wood-lot has no 
price; I could not think of selling it for the money I gave 
for it. Full of mysterious values, — what forms, what colors, 
what powers ! null to our ignorance, but opening fast enough 
to wit. One thing our Concord wants, — a Berkshire brook, 
now beside the road and now under it, which cheers the 
traveller for miles with its loud voice. 

C. But here is our Brook itself, a petted darling of the 
meadows — wild minstrel of an ancient song, poured through 
our vales for ever. The sands of Pactolus were not more golden 
than these : and black are the eddying pools where the old ex- 
perienced trout sleeps on his oars. "As hurries the water to 
the Sea, so seeks the Soul its Universe."" And this is our May- 
flower, sweet as Cytherea's breath; in yonder lowlands grows 
the climbing fern. Simple flowers ! yet was not Solomon in all 
his glory arrayed like one of these. Soon come the water 
mouse-ear, typha or reed-mace; Drosera rotundifolia^ Solo- 
mon"'s seal, violets of all sorts, bulbous arethrum, yellow lily, 
dwarf cornel, lousewort, yellow Star of Bethlehem, Polygala 
pauci/blia. Arum triphyllum, cohosh, — 

E. O hush ! hush ! what names ! Hadst thou spoken to me of 
Violet, that child of beauty ! of which your poet Street says, — 

^' Where its long rings unwinds the fern. 
The violet, nestling low. 
Casts back the white lid of its urn. 
Its purple streaks to show." 

C. Yes, and he adds, — 

[ 1S9 ] 



THOREAU 

'^ Beautiful blossom ! first to rise 
And smile beneath Spring's wakening skies ; 

The courier of the band 
Of coming flowers, — what feelings sweet 
Flow as the silvery germ we meet 

Upon its needle- wand !" 

CONANTUM 

C. Let us now go forward to Conantum, that wide tract 
named by our Henry from its owner, old Eben Conant, — as 
good as the domains of royalty, and yet the possession of 
that ancient New England farmer. 

E. From the bridge I see only a simple field, with its few 
old apple-trees. It rises neatly to the west. 

C. When we traverse the whole of the long seigniorage, I 
think you will agree that this is a good place for a better 
than Montaigne-chateau. 

T. There is the stake-driver "pump-a-gawing"" again. From 
this corner to Fairhaven Bay the domain extends, with not 
an ounce of cultivated soil. First a tract of woodland, with 
its pleasant wood-paths, its deep and mossy swamp, where 
owls and foxes have holes, and the long lichens sway their 
soft green tresses from the rotting spruce.^ 

C. Behind yon old barn stands the original farmhouse; the 
mouldering shell has ripened birth and death, marriage feasts 
and funeral tables, where now the careless flies only buzz and 
the century-old crow alights on the broad roof that almost 
touches the ground. The windows are gone, the door half 
1 Holden's Swamp, where grows Kalmia glauca. 

[ 140 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

ruined, the chimney down, the roof falling in, — sans eyes, 
sans ears, sans life, sans everything. Not even a contempla- 
tive cat shakes his irresponsive sides in this solitude, and the 
solid grass grows up to the edges of the enormous door-stone. 
Our ancestors took a pride in acquiring the largest and flat- 
test rock possible to lay before the hospitable sill. We do 
get unscrupulously rid of the ancestral mansion, and the pot 
of beans of the careful grandson bakes upon the architectural 
desolation of "my grandpapa." Ascend this height, and you 
will see (part second) the lovely valley of the Concord at 
your feet, — 

"See where the winding vale its lavish stores irriguous spreads." 

Thomson. 

E. There is Musketaquit, the grass-ground river; a goodly 
view, and noble walking! 

C. Let us continue on a few steps more, till we reach the 
little meadow, — a natural arboretum, where grow the black 
ash, the bass and the cohosh; cornels, viburnums, sassafras, 
and arethusas. 

E. "Each spot where lilies prank their state 
Has drunk the life-blood of the great ; 
The violets yon field which stain 
Are moles of beauties Time hath slain." 

So sings Omar Chiam. Sitting in this steep Park of Conantum, 
always the same regret. Is all this beauty to perish.? shall 
none remake this sun and wind, — the sky-blue river, the 
river-blue sky? 

[141 ] 



THOREAU 

C. How the earliest kiss of June will heap these trees with 
leaves, and make land and orchard, hillside and garden, ver- 
dantly attractive. This great domain, all but one meadow, is 
under the holding of one old prudent husbandman; and here 
is an old cellar-hole, where in front yet grows the vivacious 
lilac, soon to be in profuse flower, — a plant to set! It has 
outlived man and dog, hen and pig, house and wife; "all, all 
are gone" except the "old familiar face" of the delightsome 
lilac. And now we stand on the verge of broad Fairhaven, 
and below us falls the scaly frost-abraded precipice to the 
pitch-pines and walnuts that stand resigned to their lower 
avocations. There is about us here that breath of wildness, 
in whose patronage the good Indians dwelt; there is around 
us in these herbaceous odors, in these lustral skies, all that 
earthly life hath ever known of beauty or of joy. Thus sings 
the lark as he springs from his nest in the grassy meadow; 
thus in the barberry hedge, along the gray and precarious 
wall, the melodious song-sparrow chants in his brownish 
summer-suit and that brevet of honor on his breast, the black 
rosette, constituting him "Conantum"'s Malibran."" It is Time''s 
holiday, the festival of June, the leafy June, the flower-sped 
June, the bird-singing June, 

''And sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes." 

T. Let us get a good look from these cliff's at Baker Farm 
that lies on that opposite shore. There is Clematis Brook, 
Blue Heron Pond, and Mount Misery. 

[ 142 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

OLD SUDBURY INN^ 

C. There you have it, — Howe's Tavern, on the old Worces- 
ter turnpike ! I was never here before, — au revoir! A new place 
is good property, if we have the prospect of owning it, — 
hey, Betty Martin? 'Tis one of the ancient taverns of the 
noble old Commonwealth: observe the date, 1719, painted on 
the sign. From that to this the same family have had it in 
their keeping; and many a glass has been drunk and paid for 
at the bar, whose defence, you observe, moves curiously up 
and down like a portcullis; and the room is "ceiled" all 
round, instead of plastered. 

E, There is a seigniorial property attached to it, — some 
hundred acres; and see the old buttresses of time-channelled 
oak along the road, in front, that must have been set at the 
same time with the inn. A spacious brook canters behind the 
house; yonder is a noble forest; and there above us, Nobscot, 
our nearest mountain. Indeed, the tract across to Boone's Pond 
and Sudbury is all a piece of wild wood. Come, away for Nob- 
scot ! taking the sandy path behind the bam. Do you see that 
strange, embowered roof, peeping out of its great vase of 
apple-blossoms ? for this, O man of many cares ! is the twenty- 
third of May, and just as much Blossom-day as ever was. 

C. I see the peeping chimney, — romance itself. May I hope 
never to know the name of the remarkable genius who dwells 
therein ? 

T. Very proper, no doubt, — Tubs or Scrubs. 

1 The Wayside Inn. 
[ 143] 



THOREAU 

C. Believe it not, enemy to Blossom-day romance. My soul 
whispers of a fair, peculiar region behind those embracing 
bouquets. 

T. Where one should surely find an anxious cook and a 
critical family. 

C. Hush ! hush ! traduce not the venerable groves. Here, or 
in some such devoted solitude, should dwell the Muse, and 
compose a treatise on the worship of Dryads. 

T. Dry as powder-post. Have you seen the scarlet tanager.f* 

C. No, — the Puseyite unmistakable among our birds, — 
true high-church scarlet. Hear! the pewee"'s soft, lisping ^^f- 
a-wee! Now as we rise, and leave the splendid chestnut forest, 
the view opens. Nobscot is a true but low mountain, and these 
small creatures give the best look-ofF. I love the broad, healthy, 
new-springing pastures, ornamented with apple-tree pyramids, 
the pastoral architecture of the cow; the waving saxifrage and 
delicate Houstonia, that spring-beauty; and the free, untram- 
melled air of the mountains, — it never swept the dusty plain. 
There 's our Cliff and Meeting-house in Concord, and Barrett's 
Hill ^ and Anursnuc; next comes high Lincoln with its gleam- 
ing spires, and modest Way land low in the grass; the Great 
Sudbury Meadows (sap-green) and Framingham and Natick. 
How many dark belts of pines stalk across this bosky land- 
scape ! like the traditions of the old Sagamores, who fished in 
yonder Long Pond (Lake Cochituate) that now colors Boston 
with reddish water that a country boy might bathe in, if hard 
pushed. 

^What is now called Nashawtuc, by its Indian name, like Anursnuc. 
[ 144 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

E. I faintly hear the sound of the church-going bell, — I 
suppose, of Framingham. 

T. As the country-wife beats her brass pan to collect her bees, 
E. Our landscape is democratic; the buildings not gathered 
into one city or baronial town, but equally scattered, leading 
up to the white steeples, round which a town clusters in every 
place where six roads meet, or where a river branches or falls. 
In the landscape to-day is found the magic of color. The world 
is all opal, and these ethereal tints the mountains wear have 
the finest effects of music on us. Mountains are great poets, 
and one glance at this fine New Hampshire range of Watatic, 
Monadnoc, Peterboro"', and Uncannoonnuk, undoes a deal of 
prose and reinstates poor, wronged men in their rights; life 
and society begin to be illuminated and transparent, and we 
generalize boldly and well. Space is felt as a privilege. There 
is some pinch and narrowness to the best. Here we laugh and 
leap to see the world ; and what amplitudes it has of meadow, 
stream, upland, forest, and sea! which yet are but lanes and 
crevices to the great space in which the world swims like a 
cockboat on the ocean. There below are those farms, but the 
life of farmers is unpoetic. The life of labor does not make 
men, but drudges. 'T is pleasant, as the habits of all poets may 
testify, to think of great proprietors, to reckon this grove we 
walk in as a park of the noble; but a continent cut up into 
ten-acre lots is not attractive. The farmer is an enchanted 
laborer, who, after toiling his brains out, sacrificing thought, 
religion, love, hope, courage, to toil, turns out a bankrupt, as 
well as the shopman, 

[ 145 ] 



THOREAU 

C. I see I must meditate an ode to be called, "Adieu, my 
Johnny-cake." Ay, ay; hasty-pudding for the masculine eye, 
chickens and jellies for girls. 

E. Yonder, on that hill is Marlboro", a town (in autumn, 
at least, when I visited it) that wears a rich appearance of 
rustic plenty and comfort; ample farms, good houses, profuse 
yellow apple-heaps, pumpkin mountains in every enclosure, 
orchards left ungathered, and, in the Grecian piazzas of the 
houses, squashes ripening between the columns. Gates's, where 
Dr. Channing and Jonathan Phillips used to resort, is no longer 
a public house. At Cutting's were oats for the horse, but no 
dinner for men; so we went, you and I, to a chestnut grove 
and an old orchard for our fare. 

C. So our Alcott might have dined in his retreat at Fruit- 
lands. But for an inscription upon our Wayside Inn, Howe's 
Tavern, here are lines: — 

Who set thine oaks 

Along the road ? 

Was it not Nature's hand, 

Old Sudbury Inn? for here I stand 

And wonder at the sight ; 
Thy oaks are my delight : 

As are the elms, 
So boldly branching to the sky. 
And the interminable woods. 
Old Inn, that wash thee nigh. 

On every side. 
With green and rustling tide. 

[ 146 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

Such oaks ! such elms ! 

And the contenting woods. 

And Nobscot near ; 

Old Inn ! 't is here 

That I, creature of moods, 

A haunt could find 

Well suited to the custom of my mind. 

Old Sudbury Inn ! most homely seat 
Where Nature hath her frugal meals, 

And studies to outwit 
What thy inside reveals ; 
Long mayst thou be 
More than a match for her and me ! 

E. And so it comes every year, this lovely Blossom-day! 

The cup of life is not so shallow 

That we have drained the best. 
That all the wines at once we swallow. 

And lees make all the rest. 

Maids of as soft a bloom shall marry. 

As Hymen yet hath blessed. 
And fairer forms are in the quarry 

Than Angelo released. 

C. And to-day the air is spotted with the encouraging rig- 
marole of the bobolink, — that buttery, vivacious, fun-may- 
take-me cornucopia of song. Once to hear his "larripee, larripee, 
buttery, scattery, wittery, pittery"; some yellow, some black 
feathers, a squeeze of air, and this summer warming song! 
The bobolink never knew cold, and never could, — the musi- 
cian of blossoms. Hark ! the veery's liquid strain, with trilling 

[147] 



THOREAU 

cadence ; his holy brother, the wood-thrush, pitches his flute- 
notes in the pine alleys, where at twilight is heard the strange 
prophecy of the whippoorwill. The oven-bird beats his brass 
w'ltcher-hoitcher in the heated shades of noon, mixed with the 
feathery roll-call of the partridge. As we take our nooning, I 
will recall some lines on this famous bird. 

THE PARTRIDGE 

Shot of the wood, from thy ambush low, — 

Bolt oif the dry leaves flying, 
With a whirring spring like an Indian's bow, 

Thou speed'st when the year is dying; 
And thy neat gray form darts whirling past. 
So silent all, as thou fliest fast. 
Snapping a leaf from the copses red ; 
Our native bird, in the woodlands bred. 

I have trembled a thousand times. 

As thy bolt through the thicket was rending. 

Wondering at thee in the autumn chimes, 
W^hen thy brother's soft wings were bending 

Swift to the groves of the spicy south ; 

Where the orange melts in the zephyr's mouth. 

And the azure sunshine humors the air. 

And Winter ne'er sleeps in his pallid chair. 

And thy whirring wings I hear. 

When the colored ice is warming 
The twigs of the forest sere. 

While the northern wind a-storming 
Draws cold as death round the Irish hut, 
That lifts its blue smoke in the railroad cut ; 
[ 148 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

And the hardy chopper sits dreaming warm, 
And thou and I are alone in the storm. 

Brave bird of my woodland haunt. 

Good child of the autumn dreary ! 
Drum of my city and bass of my chaunt, 

With thy rushing music cheery ! 
Desert not my bowers for the southern flowers, 
Nor my pale north woods for her ruby hours; 
Let us bide the rude blast and the ringing hail, 
Till the violets peep on the Indian's trail. 

TO WHITE POND 

T. Above our heads the night-hawk rips; and, soaring over 
the tallest pine, the fierce hen-harrier screams and hisses; cow, 
coiv, cow, sounds the timorous cuckoo: thus our cheerful and 
pleasant birds do sing along else silent paths, strewn with the 
bright and bluest violets, with Houstonias, anemones, and 
cinque-foils. Academies of Music and Schools of Design, truly ! 
and to-day on all the young oaks shall be seen their bright 
crimson leaves, each in itself as good as a rich and delicate 
flower; and the sky bends o'er us with its friendly face like 
Jerusalem delivered. 

E. And Mrs. Jones and Miss Brown — 

T. No, indeed: I declare it boldly, let us leave out man in 
such days; his history may be written at nearly any future 
period, in dull weather. 

C. Yet hath the same toiling knave in yonder field a kind 
of grim advantage. 

T. The grime I perceive, and hear the toads sing. 
[ 149 ] 



THOREAU 

E. Yet the poet says, — 

"Not in their houses stand the stars. 
But o'er the pinnacles of thine." 

T. And also listen to my poet : — 

"Go thou to thy learned task, 
I stay with the flowers of Spring ; 

Do thou of the Ages ask. 
What to me the Hours will bring." 

Oh, the soft, mellow green of the swamp-sides! Oh, the sweet, 
tender green of the pastures! Do you observe how like the 
colors of currant-jelly are the maple-keys where the sun shines 
through them "^ I suppose to please you I ought to be unhappy, 
but the contrast is too strong. 

C. See the Rana palustris bellying the world in the warm 
pool, and making up his froggy mind to accept the season 
for lack of a brighter; and will not a gossiping dialogue be- 
tween two comfortable brown thrashers cure the heartache of 
half the world ? Hear the charming song-sparrow, the Prima- 
donna of the wall-side; and the meadow-lark's sweet, timid, 
yet gushing lay, hymns the praise of the Divine Beauty. And 
— were you ever in love.^* 

T. Was that the squeak of a night-hawk .? 

C. Yes, flung beyond the thin wall of nature, whereon thy 
fowls and beasts are spasmodically plastered, and swamped so 
perfectly in one of thy own race as to forget this illusory 
showman''s wax figures.? 

T. A stake-driver! pump-a-gmv, pump-a-gaw, like an old 
[ 150] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

wooden pump. They call the bittern hutter-hump in some 
countries. Everything is found in nature, even the stuff of 
which thou discoursest thus learnedly. 

C. I would it were not, O Epaminondas Holly! 

T. What, sir! and have you had a touch of that chicken- 
pox? 

C. I shall not let the cat out of the bag. 

T. Go in peace! I must do my best and catch that green- 
throated gentleman. To take frogs handsomely requires a 
quick eye and a fine touch, like high art. They dive under 
the sludge; their colors are of the water and the grass, 
chameleon-like. How ridiculous is yonder colt, the color of 
sugar gingerbread, set upon four long legs and swishing a bald 
tail ! and how he laughs at us men-folks nibbling our crackers 
and herring! May our wit be as dry as our matinee. 

E. Yesterday was Spring: to-day beginneth the second les- 
son, what doth Summer typify? 

C. Hot ovens, a baking-pan, the taking our turn at the 
spit. Grasshoppers creak over dry fields, and deviPs-needles 
whizz across your hat as if they were scorched. Black snakes 
conclude it is pretty comfortable, considering January in the 
distance. Oh ! the heat is like solid beds of feathers. 

E. I think you said we were going to White Pond? 

C. A favorable July afternoon's plunge; the river flashes in 
the sun like a candle. (This little forget-me-not of ours is as 
pure a blue as the German's.) Ants, bees, millers, June flies, 
horse flies, open shop; woodchucks set up at the mouths of 
their holes, and our learned advocate, the Mephitis chinga, 

[ 151 ] 



THOREAU 

probes the wood-roads for beetles; robins, bull- frogs, bobo- 
links, Maryland yellow-throats, and oven-birds perform operas 
all day long; the brave senecio spots the sides of ditches with 
its dusky gold. How sweet its root smells! 

E. This is a right pleasant stroll along the Assabet. 

C. First-class! The caterpillars make minced-meat of the 
wild cherries. Nature does so love to pet worms, — an odd 
taste. The great iris is now perfect, and the maple-leaved vi- 
burnum, — two flower-belles; the turtles dream at their ease, 
with but their noses above water among the floating-heart and 
potamogetons, — a good investment in a blaze. Verdure, ver- 
dure, — meadows, copses, foregrounds and distances. Showers 
raise up their heads in the west to catch the leafy prospect. 

E. Is it not against the dignity of man that a little light 
and heat can so despoil him.'' 

C. See that nest of breams, the parents swimming over it, 
— some fun now in being tickled by a cool stream. And there 
lives a lordly baron, a great manorial seignior, with a private 
road to his castle of Belvoir, as good a king as can be found 
in Christendom. We had best stop at Duganne's spring and 
get a drink : it is as cold as charity. The swallows dart away 
over the river and Nut-meadow Brook, but a few feet above 
the surface, taking insects; the turtles have writ their slow 
history on this Duganne sand-bank. There stretches the old 
Marlboro' road, and now, gleaming beneath the trees, you 
may see the water of White Pond. 

E. 'T is not as large as Walden : the water looks of the like 
purity. 

[ 152 ] 



I 



WALKS AND TALKS 

C, Yes, 't is a pretty little Indian basin, lovely as Walden 
once was, and no pen could ever purely describe its beauties. 
We can almost see the sachem in his canoe in the shadowy 
cove. 

E. How wonderful, as we make the circuit of the shore, 
are the reflections! but once we saw them in autumn, and 
then the marvellous effect of the colored woods held us al- 
most to the going down of the sun. The waters, slightly 
rippled, took their proper character from the pines, birches, 
and few oaks which composed the grove; and the submarine 
wood seemed made of Lombardy poplar, with such delicious 
green, stained by gleams of mahogany from the oaks, and 
streaks of white from the birches, every moment more excel- 
lent: it was the world through a prism. In walking with you 
we may see what was never before shown to the eye of man. 
And yet for how many ages has this pretty wilderness of 
White Pond received the clouds and sun into its transparency, 
and woven each day new webs of birch and pine; shooting 
out wilder angles, and more fantastical crossings of the coarse 
threads, which in the water have such momentary elegance! 

C. What intolerable usurpations of the Past do we see ! not 
in Nature, which never did oppress the heart that loved her, 
— -but in literature. See how those great hoaxes, the Homers 
and Shakespeares, are hindering the books and the men of 
to-day! You people who have been pedagogues scarcely tol- 
erate the good things in the moderns. There is a versifier of 
ours who has made some accurate notices of our native things, 
— Alfred Street. I fear you must let me give you a proof of 

[153] 



THOREAU 

this, — nothing from Herrick. Mate me, if you will, these 
passages: — 

*'Yon piny knoll, thick-covered with the brown 

Dead fringes, in the sunshine's bathing flood 

Looks like dark gold." 

''The thicket by the roadside casts its cool 
Black breadth of shade across the heated dust." 

''These thistle-downs, through the rich 
Bright blue, quick float, like gliding stars, and then 
Touching the sunshine, flash and seem to melt 
Within the dazzling brilliance." 

"Another sunset, crouching low 
Upon a rising pile of cloud. 
Bathes deep the island with its glow. 
Then shrinks behind its gloomy shroud." 

E. He is a good colorist. 
C. Not less acute and retentive is his ear: — 
"That flying harp, the honey-bee." 

"The spider's clock 
Ticked in some crevice of the rock." 

"The light click of the milk-weed's bursting pods." 

"The spider lurks 
A close-crouched ball ; out-darting, as a hum 
Dooms its trapped prey, and, looping quick its threads. 
Chains into helplessness those buzzing wings." 

"The wood-tick taps its tiny mufiled drum 
To the shrill cricket-fife." 
[ 154 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

E. He saw peculiarities no one else describes. 
C. Yes, — exquisite touches of creation made for his in- 
sight: — 

''The whizzing of the humming-bird's swift wings 
Spinning grey, glittering circles round its shape." 

"Yon aster, that displayed 
A brief while since its lustrous bloom, has now. 
Around the shells that multiply its life. 
Woven soft downy plumes." 

''The gossamer motionless hung from the spray 
Where the weight of the dewdrops had torn it away. 
And the seed of the thistle, that whisper could swing 
Aloft on its wheel, as though borne on a wing, 
When the yellow-bird severed it, dipping across. 
Its soft plumes unruffled, fell down on the moss," 

Does the mullein (Thapsus verbascum) grow in England.? 

E. I do not remember it there, but have heard that it 
grows on Mount Pelion, with its architectural spire, too con- 
spicuous to be forgotten. 

C. Street notices in one of his lines something 

''Beside yon mullein's braided stalk;" 

and he has a picture of the early fern, "uncrumpling"" as 
somebody says, — 

"From the earth the fern 
Thrusts its green, close-curled wheel;" 

and he has a movement to record: — 

"The snail 
Creeps in its twisted fortress." 
[ 155 ] 



THOREAU 

Sometimes I have thought Herrick the best of English poets, 
— a true Greek in England. He was a much better Grecian 
than Milton, who is too much like my uncle. Dr. Channing. 

E. The landscape before us would give Herrick all he 
needed. Leaving White Pond, and passing by that dismal 
dell recommended by you as a valuable preserve for shooting 
owls, and well adapted for self-murder, we have come over a 
hill of the right New Hampshire slope, and now are among 
good rude landscapes of the Okefenokee or Quinquinabosset 
type, — hitherto un walked by our Saturday afternoon pro- 
fessors. 

C. I once thought there were some occupations that could 
be taken up by amateurs; but no; even walking cannot be; it 
must be done by professors, as you say. But what say you of 
"Festus," — Bailey's poem.? I can repeat you a few of his lines, 
— classic, and as good as those of your old dramatists. 

"How can the beauty of material things 
So win the heart and work upon the mind. 
Unless like-natured with them?" 

"When the soul sweeps the future like a glass. 
And coming things, full-freighted with our fates, 
Jut out, dark, on the offing of the mind." 

"The shadow hourly lengthens o'er my brain, 
And peoples all its pictures with thyself." 

"^And lasses with sly eyes, 
And the smile settling in their sun-flecked cheeks. 
Like noon upon the mellow apricot." 

[156] 



WALKS AND TALKS 

*'To the high air sunshine and cloud are one." 

*' Friendship has passed me like a ship at sea." 

''The wave is never weary of the wind. 

For marble is a shadow weighed with mind. 

The last high, upward slant of sun upon the trees. 
Like a dead soldier's sword upon his pall." 

E. And that is a pretty little poem of Swedenborg's, the 
beginning of a book, written in prose: "The ship is in the 
harbor; the sails are swelling; the east wind blows; let us 
weigh anchor, and put forth to sea." 

C. Which of us would not choose to be one of these insects, 
— rosebugs of splendid fate, living on grape-flowers, apple- 
trees and roses, and dying of an apoplexy of sweet sensations 
in these golden middle days of July.? Hail, vegetable gods! 
What saith your Adshed of the melon.'* for criticism needs a 
sop to Cerberus: — 

''Color, taste and smell, smaragdus, honey and musk. 
Amber for the tongue, for the eye a picture rare ; 
If you cut the fruit in slices, every slice a crescent fair ; 
If you have it whole, the full harvest moon is there." 

E. I could not find it in my heart to chide the man who 
should ruin himself to buy a patch of well-timbered oak-land ; 
I admire the taste which makes the avenue to a house (were 
the house never so small) through a wood, as this disposes 
the mind of the host and guest to the deference due. We 
want deference; and when we come to realize that thing me- 

[ 157] 



THOREAU 

chanically, we want acres. Scatter this hot and crowded popu- 
lation at respectful distances each from each, over the vacant 
world. The doctor and his friends fancied it was the cattle 
made all this wide space necessary; and that if there were no 
cows to pasture, less land would suffice. But a cow does not 
require so much land as my eyes require betwixt me and my 
neighbor. 

C. Man fits into Nature like a seal in its ring. Clap down 
in the middle of to-day's pudding and eat thereof. They whip 
lads at school for looking off their books; despatch your 
Sunday plate of broth. The poet asks, — 

''Where is Skymir, giant Skymir.'' 
Come, transplant the woods for me ! 
Scoop up yonder aged ash. 
Centennial fir, old boundary pine. 
Beech by Indian warriors blazed. 
Maples tapped by Indian girls. 
Oaks that grew in the Dark Ages : 
Heedful bring them, set them straight 
In sifted soil before my porch ! 
Now turn the river on their roots, 
That no leaf wilt, or leading shoot 
Drop his tall-erected plume." 

E. I admire here the waving meadow, the iron-gray house, 
just the color of the granite rock below, the paths of the 
thicket, the wide, straggling, wild orchard, in which Nature 
has deposited every possible flavor in the apples of different 
trees, — whole zones and climates she has concentrated into 
apples. We think of the old benefactors who have conquered 

[ 158 J 



WALKS AND TALKS 

these fields; of the old man, who is just dying in these days, 
who has absorbed such volumes of sunshine, like a huge melon 
or pumpkin in the sun, who has owned in every part of Con- 
cord a wood-lot, until he could not find the boundaries of 
them, and never saw their interiors. 

But, we say, where is he who is to save the present mo- 
ment, and cause that this beauty be not lost? Shakespeare 
saw no better heaven or earth, but had the power and need 
to sing, and seized the dull, ugly England (ugly to this), and 
made it amiable and enviable to all reading men; and now 
we are forced into likening this to that; whilst, if one of us 
had the chanting constitution, that land would be no more 
heard of. But let us have space enough; let us have wild 
grapes, and rock-maples with tubs of sugar; let us have huge 
straggling orchards; let us have the Ebba Hubbard^ pear, 
cider-mills with tons of pomace, — walnut and oak, peat, 
cows, horses, Paddies, carts, and sleds. 

C. That good Welsh poet, Henry Vaughan, said, — 

"O knit me that am crumbled dust." 

E. Oh, certainly! Oaks and horse-chestnuts are quite obso- 
lete, and the Horticultural Society are about to recommend 
the introduction of the cabbage as a shade-tree; so much 
more comprehensible and convenient, all grown from the 
seed upward to its extreme generous crumple, within thirty 

^ Ebenezer Hubbard was the old farmer who owned the house of the 
Revolutionary miller by the village Mill-dam, and left by will a thou- 
sand dollars for the monument which is now the Minute-man. f. b. s. 

[159] 



THOREAU 

days, — past contradiction the ornament of the modern world, 
and then good to eat, — choice good, as acorns and horse- 
chestnuts are not. We will have shade-trees for breakfast. 

Then the effrontery of one man's exhibiting more wit or 
merit than another! Man of genius said you? man of virtue? 
I tell you both are malformations, dropsies of the brain or 
the liver, and shall be strictly punishable in the new Com- 
monwealth, Nothing that is not extempore shall now be tol- 
erated. Pyramids and cities shall give place to tents; the 
man — soul, sack, and skeleton, which many years or ages 
have built up — shall go for nothing; his dinner — the rice 
and mutton he ate two hours ago, now fast flowing into 
chyle — is all we consider. And the problem, — how to detach 
new dinner from old man, — what we respect from what we 
repudiate, — is the problem for the Academies. 



[160] 



WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED 



"Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis, 
Quem non mordaci resplendens gloria fuco 
Solicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus, 
Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et paupere cultu 
Exigit innocuae silentia vitae." 

POLITIAN. 

"If over this world of ours 
His wings ray phoenix spread. 
How gracious o'er land and sea 
The soul-refreshing shade ! 

"Either world inhabits he, 
Sees oft below him planets roll ; 
His body is all of air compact, 
Of Allah's love his soul. 

"Courage, Hafiz, though not thine 
Gold wedges and silver ore. 
More worth to thee thy gift of song, 
And thy clear insight more." 

Hafiz. 

'The wretched pedlear more noise he maketh to cry his 
soap than a rich merchant all his dear worth wares." 

AXCREN RlWLE. 



CHAPTER IX 

walks and talks continued 
flint's pond 

T. Suppose we go to Flint's. 

C. Agreed. 

T. That country with its high summits in Lincoln is good 
for breezy days. I love the mountain view from the Three 
Friends' Hill beyond the pond, looking over Concord. It is 
worth the while to see the mountains in our horizon once 
a day. They are the natural temples, the elevated brows of 
the earth, looking at which the thoughts of the beholder are 
naturally elevated and sublime, — etherealized. I go to Flint's 
Pond, also, to see a rippling lake and a reedy island in its 
midst, — Reed Island. A man should feed his senses with the 
best the land affords. These changes in the weather, — how 
much they surprise men who keep no journal! but look back 
for a year, and you will most commonly find a similar change 
at the same time, like the dry capsules of the violets along 
this wood-road. Temperatures, climates, and even clouds, may 
be counted (like flowers, insects, animals, and reptiles) among 
the constants, — inevitable reappearances; and things yet 
further typify each other, like the breeze rushing over the 
waterfall. 

C. Nay, do not pierce me with your regularity, though 
you might say, like Peter to the sentimental lady, "Madam, 
my pigs never squeal." 

[ 163] 



THOREAU 

T. Not so : learn to see its philosophy in each thing. It is a 
significant fact, that though no man is quite well or healthy, 
yet every one believes, practically, that health is the rule, 
and disease the exception; and each invalid is wont to think 
himself in a minority, and to postpone somewhat of endeavor 
to another state of existence. But it may be some encourage- 
ment to men to know that in this respect they stand on the 
same platform, that disease is in fact the rule of our terres- 
trial life, and the prophecy of a celestial life. Where is the 
coward who despairs because he is sick.? Seen in this light, 
our life with all its diseases will look healthy; and, in one 
sense, the more healthy as it is the more diseased. 

C. Upon your principle: "I am thus wet, because I am 
thus dry."" 

T. Disease is not an accident of the individual, nor even of 
the generation, but of life itself. In some form, and to some 
degree or other, it is one of the permanent conditions of life. 
It is a cheering fact, nevertheless, that men affirm health 
unanimously, and esteem themselves miserable failures. Here 
was no blunder. They gave us life on exactly these conditions, 
and methinks we shall live it with more heart when we clearly 
perceive that these are the terms on which we have it. Life is 
a warfare, a struggle, and the diseases of the body answer to 
the troubles and defects of the spirit. Man begins by quarrel- 
ling with the animal in him, and the result is immediate dis- 
ease. In proportion as the spirit is more ambitious and per- 
severing, the more obstacles it will meet with. It is as a seer 
that man asserts his disease to be exceptional. 

[ 164 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED 

C. Your philosophers and their tax of explanations remind 
me of Donne's familiar Snail: — 

*'Wise emblem of our politic world. 
Sage snail, within thine own self curled; 
Instruct me swiftly to make haste. 
Whilst thou my feet go slowly past. 
Compendious snail ! thou seem'st to me 
Large Euclid's strict epitome. 
That big still with thyself dost go. 
And livest an aged embryo." 

T. And I might make that other criticism upon society 
and its institutions: — 

''While man doth ransack man 
And builds on blood, and rises by distress; 
And th' inheritance of desolation leaves 
To great-expecting hopes." 

C. Then mark how man and his affairs fall in rounds: the 
railroad keeps time like one of Simon Willard"'s clocks, satu- 
rated with insurance. How much the life of certain men goes 
to sustain, to make respected, the institutions of society ! They 
are the ones who pay the heaviest tax. They are, in effect, 
supported by a fund which society possesses for that end, or 
they receive a pension; and their life seems to be a sinecure, 
but it is not. Unwritten laws are the most stringent. He who 
is twice erratic has become the object of custom: — 

"There are whom Heaven has blessed with store of wit. 
Yet want as much again to manage it." 

E. Then am I a customer, and a paying one. Montaigne 
[ 165 ] 



THOREAU 

took much pains to be made a citizen of Rome: I should 
much prefer to have the freedom of a peach-orchard, — once 
a great part of this town of Lincohi was such, — or of some 
plantations of apples and pears I have seen, — to that of any 
city, "You do not understand values," said Sylvan. "I econo- 
mize every drop of sap in my trees, as if it were wine. A few 
years ago these trees were whipsticks: now every one of them 
is worth a hundred dollars. Look at their form : not a branch 
nor a twig is to spare. They look as if they were arms and 
hands and fingers, holding out to you the fruit of the Hes- 
perides. Come, see," said he, "what weeds grow behind this 
fence." And he brought me to a pear-tree. "Look," he said: 
"this tree has every property that should belong to a plant. 
It is hardy and almost immortal. It accepts every species of 
nourishment, and can live almost on none, like a date. It is 
free from every form of blight. Grubs, worms, flies, bugs, all 
attack it. It yields them all a share of its generous juices; 
but, when they left their eggs on its broad leaves, it thick- 
ened its cuticle a little, and suffered them to dry up and 
shook off the vermin." It grows like the ash Ygdrasil. — 

C. A bushel of wood-ashes were better than a cart-load of 
mythology. If I did not love Carlyle for his worship of heroes, 
I should not forgive him for setting out that ash. There is 
the edge of the Forest Lake, like an Indian tradition, gleam- 
ing across the pale-face''s moonshine. From this Three Friends' 
HilP (when shall we three meet again?) the distant forests 
have a curiously rounded or bowery look, clothing the hills 
1 The friends were Emerson, Channing, and Thoreau. 

[166] 



WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED 

quite down to the water's edge and leaving no shore; the 
ponds are like drops of dew, amid and partly covering the 
leaves, 

T. So the great globe is luxuriously crowded without mar- 
gin. The groundsel, or "fire- weed," which has been touched 
by frost, already is as if it had died long months ago, or 
a fire had run through it. The black birches, now yellow 
on the hill-sides, look like flames; the chestnut-trees are 
burnished yellow as well as green. It is a beautifully clear 
and bracing air, with just enough coolness; full of the memory 
of frosty mornings, through which all things are distinctly 
seen, and the fields look as smooth as velvet. The fragrance 
of grapes is on the breeze, and the red drooping barberries 
sparkle amid their leaves. The horned (cornuta) utricularia 
on the sandy pond-shores is not affected by the frost. The 
sumacs are among the reddest leaves; the witch-hazel is in 
bloom, and the crows fill the landscape with a savage sound. 
The mullein, so conspicuous with its architectural spire, the 
prototype of candelabrums, must be remembered. 

E. If Herrick be the best of English poets, as sometimes, 
when in the vein, you say (a true Greek), this landscape again 
could give him all he needed, — he who sang a cherry, Julia's 
hair (we have plenty of that), Netterby's pimple (yes), his own 
hen Partlet, and Ben Jonson (we have all of these, except- 
ing a large assortment of Ben Jonsons). We possess a wider 
variety here among the maples; but the poetry and the prose 
of that age was more solid and cordial. — 

C. But hear Street once more : — 
[ 167 ] 



THOREAU 

. . . "The little violet 
Pencilled with purple on one snowy leaf. 

And golden-rod and aster stain the scene 
With hues of sun and sky. 

The last butterfly 
Like a winged violet, floating in the meek 
Pink-colored sunshine, sinks his velvet feet 
Within the pillared mullein's delicate down. 

Here showers the light in golden dots. 
There sleeps the shade in ebon spots. 

Floated the yellow butterfly, 

A wandering spot of sunshine by. 

. . . the buckwheat's scented snow." 

He has his prettinesses, too; 

. . . ''The holy moon, 
A sentinel upon the steeps of heaven. 



A cluster of low roofs is prest 
Against the mountain's leaning breast. 

One mighty pine, amid the straggling trees. 
Lifts its unchanging pyramid to heaven. 

He marked the rapid whirlwind shoot. 
Trampling the pine-tree with its foot. 

The bee's low hum, the whirr of wings. 
And the sweet songs of grass-hid things." 

[ 168 J 



WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED 

So Vaughan has a hint of this insight : — 

''As this loud brook's incessant fall 
In streaming rings re-stagnates all^ 
Which reach by course the bank, and then 
Are no more seen. 



Shall my short hour, my inch. 
My one poor sand. 

Her art, whose pensive weeping eyes 
Were once sin's loose and tempting spies. 

Heaven 
Is a plain watch, and without figures winds 
All ages up. 

How shrill are silent tears ! " 

E. But Vaughan is like the interiors of Era AngeHco. 

C. Has this pond an outlet, as methinks it should, when 
you hold the reflections caught from its waters thus' precious.? 

T. It has: a brook runs from the southerly end, that joins 
another from Beaver Pond, and, chasing swiftly down fine 
meadows, amid rocky knolls in Weston, goes to turn water- 
wheels at Stony Brook. 

ROUND HILL IN SUDBURY MEADOWS 

C. You judge it is three miles and a half to the point where 
you propose to take the boat.'' — 

T. Yes: in the rear of the blacksmith's house, — he who 
calls the bittern "Baked Plum-pudding" and "Cow-poke," 

[ 169 ] 



THOREAU 

and the woodchuck "Squash-belly." A composed, moderate, 
self-understanding man; — here 's the pinnace (as our neighbor 
names his candle-stick) for a voyage among the lilies. Why 
look ye so intently at the bottom? 

C. I commonly sit, not m, but above, the water. 

T. Be assured, sir, your feet are not wholly in the Concord. 
'Tis dry enough in July, outside, — push off; she will not sink 
more than four feet, — the depth here. 

C. Full many a glorious morning have I seen, but not a 
more superb one than this. How in its glassy folds the dark, 
wine-colored river lays its unswept carpet across the fragrant 
meadows! The button-bushes and willows resound with the 
gleeful chorus of redwings and bobolinks, while the courageous 
king-bird hovers quivering over his nest. If there is any one 
thing birds do like, it is to sing in sunshiny mornings. Why, 
this is the mouth of the Pantry Brook: it comes out of the 
mysterious interstices of Sudbury, where the mud is up to 
your middle, and where some of Sam Haynes''s folks died. I 
wish I had a photograph of Sam, the fisherman : as the man 
did when he was told that Croesus was the richest man who 
ever lived: if he beat Sam"'s stories, he must have been rich. 
And there is Round Hill, — the river bending, yet not before 
we anchor in the Port of Lilies (perfumed love-tokens float- 
ing in a lapsing dream of turquoise and gold, like Cleopatra^'s 
barge); some experiments in rose-tints, too, were tried with 
that dear creature, the water-lily, and did well. 

E. When you thus eulogize Nature, it reminds me how great 
an advantage he possesses who can turn a verse, over all the 

[ no] 



WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED 

human race. I read in Wood's "Athenae Oxonienses" a score 
of pages of learned nobodies, of whose once odoriferous repu- 
tations not a trace remains in the air; and then I come to the 
name of some Carew or Herrick, Suckling or Chapman, as 
fresh and lustrous as these floating sunlight creams. 
C. A Concord poet says: — 

''There are beggars in Iran and Araby, 
Said was hungrier than all ; 
Men said he was a fly 
That came to every festival, 
Also he came to the mosque 
In trail of camel and caravan, 
Out from Mecca to Isphahan ; — 
Northward he went to the snowy hills, — 
At court he sat in the grave divan. 

His music was the south wind's sigh. 
His lamp the maiden's downcast eye. 
And ever the spell of beauty came 
And turned the drowsy world to flame. 
By lake and stream and gleaming hall. 
And modest copse, and the forest tall. 
Where'er he went the magic guide 
Kept its place by the poet's side. 

Tell me the world is a talisman. 
To read it must be the art of man; 
Said melted the days in cups like pearl. 
Served high and low, the lord and the churl ; 
Loved harebells nodding on a rock, 
A cabin hung with curling smoke. 
And huts and tents, nor loved he less 

[ 171 ] 



THOREAU 

Stately lords in palaces^ 

Fenced by form and ceremony." ^ 

T. There, on Round Hill, is a true woodman's hut. The 
hill is low, but from its position enjoys a beautiful outlook 
upon Sudbury meadows. Yes: this is a good place to fish. 
Can you keep worms in your mouth, like Indians? Maybe 
they won''t bite. 

C. Which, — fish, worms, or Indians? Things that are done 
it is needless to speak about, or remonstrate against: things 
that are past are needless to blame. — 

THE DOG PETER, OR B0SE2 

C. I fancied the saying, that man was created a little 
lower than the angels, should have been, a little lower than 
the animals! 

T. Does it not flavor of puerile conceit, that fancy ? 

C. The conceit of man is dark; but, as we go to Goose- 
shore swimming-place, on the Assabet, with Peter running 
before, I feel sorry that Goethe introduced a black dog in 
" Faust,"" as the kernel of the elephant. And the wild animals 
are superior to the tame, just as the Indian treads before 
the civilized man. Observe Peter capering through bush and 
briar, plunging into pool or stream, with his smiling tail! 
and he sweats through his nose. What dull pedants the mirth- 
provoking creatures consider us! and how more than tame 

1 Verses of Emerson's, first printed by Channing here. 

2 One of Channing's dogs, kept by him in 1853-54. 

[ 172 ] 



WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED 

poor Cowper's three tame hares may have deemed him, in 
his nightcap, made by Mrs. Unwin! Peter catches no cold, 
though he wets his feet, and never has the doctor. As the 
Indians amused the Jesuits in Canada, by sitting all day in 
a nude manner, frozen to the ice, and fishing complacently 
through holes in it, as if lolling on feather beds, so I have 
known Peter take a nap all night on a snow-bank in January. 

There, he's at the base of that mud-hole; Lyell was never 
deeper in geology than he is. 

T. [Journal, Augtist 29, 18S1.] I saw a man by the river, 
working with a horse in a field, carting dirt, and the horse 
and man's relations to him struck me as very remarkable. 
There was the horse, a mere animated machine (though his 
tail was brushing off the flies), his whole existence subordi- 
nated to the man's; with no tradition, perhaps no instinct, 
in him of a time when he was wild and free, — completely 
humanized. No compact had been made with him that he 
should have the Saturday afternoons, or the Sundays, or any 
holidays; his independence never being recognized, and it be- 
ing now forgotten both by men and horses that the horse 
was ever free. For I am not aware that there are any wild 
horses surely known not to be descended from tame ones. He 
was assisting that man to pull down that bank and spread 
it over the meadow; only keeping off the flies with his tail, 
and stamping and catching a mouthful of grass or leaves 
from time to time, on his own account, — all the rest for 
Man. It seemed hardly worth while that he should be ani- 
mated for this. It was plain that the man was not educating 

[ 173 ] 



THOREAU 

the horse; not trying to develop his nature, but merely get- 
ting work out of him. That mass of animated matter seemed 
more completely the servant of man than any inanimate. 

For slaves have their holidays; a heaven is conceded to 
them, but to the horse none; now and for ever he is man's 
slave. The more I considered, the more the man seemed akin 
to the horse; only his was the stronger will of the two; for a 
little further on I saw an Irishman shovelling, who evidently 
was as much tamed as the horse. He had stipulated that, 
to a certain extent, his independence be recognized, and yet 
really he was but little more independent. 

I had always regarded the horse as a free people some- 
where, living wild ; as whatever has not come under the sway 
of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men 
are wild, — not tamed and broken by society. Now for my 
part I have such a respect for the horse's nature as would 
tempt me to let him alone; not to interfere with him, — his 
walks, his diet, his loves. But by mankind he is treated sim- 
ply as an engine which must have rest and is sensible of pain. 
Suppose that every squirrel was made to turn a coffee-mill; 
suppose that the gazelles were made to draw milk-carts ! 

There he was, with his tail cut off because it was in the 
way, or to suit his master's taste; his mane trimmed and his 
feet shod with iron, that he might wear longer. What is a 
horse but an animal that has lost his liberty.? what is it but 
a system of slavery.? and do you not by insensible and unim- 
portant degrees come to human slavery.? And has man got 
any more liberty himself for having robbed the horse.? Or 

[ m] 



WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED 

has he lost just as much of his own, and become more Hke 
the horse he has robbed? Is not the other end of the bridle, 
too, in this case, coiled around his own neck? hence stable- 
boys, jockeys, and all that class daily transported by fast 
horses. There he stood, with his oblong, square figure (his 
tail being cut off) seen against the water, brushing off the 
flies with his tail, and stamping; braced back while the man 
was filling the cart. 

No doubt man impresses his own character on the beasts 
which he tames and employs. They are not only humanized, 
but they acquire his particular human nature. John Hosmer's 
dog sprang up, ran out and growled at us; and in his eye I 
seemed to see the eye of his master. How much oxen are like 
farmers, and cows like farmers' wives, and young steers and 
heifers like farmers' boys and girls! The farmer acts on the 
ox, and the ox reacts on the farmer; they do not meet half- 
way, it is true, but they do meet at a distance from the centre 
of each, proportionate to each one's intellectual power. The 
farmer is ox-like in his walk, in his strength, in his trust- 
worthiness, in his taste. 

C. ''The ill that's wisely feared is half withstood." 

I regard the horse as a human being in a humble state of ex- 
istence. Virtue is not left to stand alone; he who practises it 
will have neighbors. 

T. [Journal, September 4'^ 1851.^ Man conceitedly names the 
intelligence and industry of animals "instinct," and overlooks 
their wisdom and fitness of behavior. I saw where the squirrels 

[ 175 ] 



THOREAU 

had carried off the ears of corn more than twenty rods from 
the corn-field, to the woods. A Httle further on, beyond Hub- 
bard's Brook, I saw a gray squirrel with an ear of yellow 
corn, a foot long, sitting on the fence, fifteen rods from the 
field. He dropped the corn, but continued to sit on the rail 
where I could hardly see him, it being of the same color with 
himself, which I have no doubt he was well aware of. He next 
went to a red maple, where his policy was to conceal himself 
behind the stem, hanging perfectly still there till I passed, 
his fur being exactly the color of the bark. When I struck 
the tree, and tried to frighten him, he knew better than to 
run to the next tree, there being no continuous row by which 
he might escape; but he merely fled higher up, and put so 
many leaves between us that it was difficult to discover him. 
When I threw up a stick to frighten him, he disappeared en- 
tirely, though I kept the best watch I could, and stood close 
to the foot of the tree. 

C. They are wonderfully cunning! 

T. That is all you can say for them. There is something 
pathetic to think of in such a life as an average Carlisle man 
may be supposed to live, drawn out to eighty years; and he 
has died, perchance, and there is nothing but the mark of his 
cider-mill left. Here was the cider-mill, and there the orchard, 
and there the hog-pasture, and so men lived and ate, and 
drank, and passed away like vermin. Their long life was mere 
duration. As respectable is the life of the woodchuck, which 
perpetuates its race in the orchard still. That is the life of 
these select men spun out. They will be forgotten in a few 

[ 176 J 



WALKS AND TALKS CONTINUED 

years, even by such as themselves, as vermin. They will be 
known like Kibbe, who is said to have been a large man, who 
weighed 250, who had five or six heavy daughters who rode 
to Concord meeting-house on horseback, taking turns; they 
were so heavy that one could only ride at once. What, then, 
would redeem such a life .'' We only know that they ate and 
drank, and built barns and died, and were buried, and still, 
perchance, their tombstones cumber the ground, — "time''s 
dead low water." There never has been a girl who learned to 
bring up a child, that she might afterwards marry. 

C. Perhaps you depreciate humanity, and overestimate 
somewhat else. 

E. A whimsical person ^ said once, he should make a prayer 
to the chance that brought him into the world. He fancied 
that when the child had escaped out of the womb, he cried, 
"I thank the bridge that brought me safe over: I would not 
for ten worlds take the next one's chance !" Will they, one of 
these days, at Fourierville, make boys and girls to order and 
pattern.'' I want, Mr. Christmas-office, a boy between No. 17 
and No. 134, half-and-half of both; you might add a trace of 
113. I want a pair of little girls like 91, only a tinge more of 
the Swede, and a tinge of the Moorish. 

Men are so careless about their really good side. James 
Baker does not imagine that he is a rich man, yet he keeps 
from year to year that lordly park of his, by Fairhaven Pond, 
lying idly open to all comers, without crop or rent, like an- 
other Lord Breadalbane, with its hedges of Arcady, its sump- 
1 It was Ellery Channing. 

[ 177 ] 



THOREAU 

tuous lawns and slopes, its orchard and grape-vines, the mirror 
at its foot, and the terraces of Hollowell on the opposite bank. 
C. Yet I know he would reprove me, as our poet has 
written: — 

^^Said Saadi, — When I stood before 

Hassan the camel-driver's door, 

I scorned the fame of Timour brave, — 

Timour to Hassan was a slave. 

In every glance of Hassan's eye 

I read rich years of victory. 

And I, who cower mean and small 

In the frequent interval. 

When wisdom not with me resides, 

Worship toil's wisdom that abides ! 

I shunned his eyes, — the faithful man's, 

I shunned the toiling Hassan's glance." 

Work, yes; and good conduct additional. You have been, 
so I have read, a schoolmaster. I trust you advised your 
neophytes "to keep company with none but men of learning 
and reputation; to behave themselves upon the place with 
candor, caution, and temperance; to avoid compotations; to 
go to bed in good time, and rise in good time; to let them 
see you are men that observe hours and discipline; to make 
much of yourself, and want nothing that is fit for you." The 
life of Caesar himself has no greater example for us than our 
own. We must thrust against a door to know whether it is 
bolted against us or not. "Where there is no diificulty, there 
is no praise; and every human excellence must be the product 
of good fortune, improved by hard work and genius."" 



THE LATTER YEAR 



"Come, sleep ! Oh, sleep! the certain knot of peace, 
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe. 
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release. 
The indifferent judge between the high and low." 

Sidney. 

"You meaner beauties of the night 
That poorly satisfy our eyes. 
More by your number than your light ; 
You common people of the skies. 
What are you when the moon shall rise?" 



. . . " in the dust be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 



H. WOTTON. 



Shirley. 



'Astrochiton Heracles, King of fire. Chorus-leader of the world, 
Sun, Shepherd of mortal life, who castest long shadows, riding 
spirally the whole heaven with burning disk, rolling the twelve- 
monthed year, the son of Time, thou performest orbit after orbit. " 

NOKNTJS. 

" It is not but the tempest that doth show 
The seaman's cunning, but the field that tries 
The captain's courage." 

Ben Jonson. 



CHAPTER X 

THE LATTER YEAR 

C. Do you observe how long the cultivated trees hold their 
leaves, such as apples, cherries, and peaches? As if they said, 
"We can longer maintain our privileges than yonder uncul- 
tured generation." The black willows stand bare along the 
edges of the river; the balm-of-Gileads and a few trium- 
phant elms yet hang out their dusky banners on the outward 
walls of the latter year. That Indian summer, too, made its 
tranquil appearance, — put in leg-bail for the greasy old red- 
skins. 

T. After the verdure goes, after the harvest of the year is 
gathered in, there is a stationary period, — the year travels on 
a paved road. It is with leaves as with fruits and woods and 
animals: when they are mature, their different characters ap- 
pear. That migration of the birds is a cunning get-off. The 
most peaceful, the sunniest autumn day in New England has 
a blue background, like some cultivated person at the bottom 
of whose palaver is ice. I hear the barking of a red squirrel 
whose clock is set a-going by a little cause in cool weather, 
when the spring is tense ; and a great scolding and ado among 
the jays. The housewives of Nature wish to see the rooms 
properly cleaned and swept, before the upholsterer comes and 
nails down his carpet of snow. The swamp burns along its 
margin with the scarlet berries of the black alder, or prinos; 
the leaves of the pitcher-plant (which old Josselyn called 

[181] 



THOREAU 

Hollow-leaved Lavender) abound, and are of many colors, 
from plain green to a rich striped yellow, or deep red. 
C. Street says, — 

''The hickory-shell, cracked open by its fall. 
Shows its ripe fruit, an ivory ball, within ; 
And the white chestnut-burr displays its sheath 
White glistening with its glossy nuts below. 
Scattered around, the wild rose-bushes hang, 
Their ruby buds tipping their thorny sprays ; 
The Everlasting's blossoms seem as cut 
In delicate silver, whitening o'er the slopes; 
The seedy clematis, branched high, is robed 
With woolly tufts ; the snowy Indian-pipe 
Is streaked with black decay ; the wintergreen 
Offers its berries ; and the prince' s-pine. 
Scarce seen above the fallen leaves, peers out, 
A firm, green, glossy wreath." 

T. Now you allude to it, does not a deception like that of 
the climate pervade the men? The downright cheer of old 
England struggling through its brogue, the dazzling stiletto 
affliction of Italy and France, with us are lacking. Like our 
climate, and our scale of classes, the sentiment of New Eng- 
land is changeable. It is one of the year's expiring days, one 
of his death-bed days. The children, playing at the school- 
house a mile off, the rattle of distant carts, farmers' voices 
calling to their cattle, cocks crowing in unknown barn-yards, 
every sound speeds through the attenuated air, as the beat of 
the death-tick echoes in the funeral chamber! The trees are 
as bare as my purse. How significant is the effect of these 

[ 182 ] 



THE LATTER YEAR 

blue smokes, as if they came from some olfactory altar of the 
Parsees, imploring the protection of yon threadbare luminary ! 
Methinks is something divine in the culinary art, — the silent 
columns of light-blue vapor rising slowly. Beneath them many 
a rusty kettle sings. 

C. "To intersoar unseen delights the more." 

QUARLES. 

E. I cannot doubt but the range of the thermometer in- 
vades the morals of the people. The puritan element survives 
in our cultivated conservatism, if there is gilding on the chain. 
Certain families resolve to divide themselves from the mass by 
ingenious marriages. And talent tries to keep its head above 
low-water, yet the agreeable orators, who go to Plymouth 
and delectate the mass, if you come at them in parlors, are 
simple creatures; and our great historian, Prescott, took the 
weight of his waistcoat before he went forth. 

C. ""T is well he was not forced to conceal the ravelled sleeve 
of care by buttoning up his outer garment. A few years past, 
yonder breezy representative may have been an usher in a 
school, where, doubtless, filigree was taught. 

FROSTY WEATHER 

T. Winter is fairly broached. When the year becomes cold, 
then we know how the pine and cypress are the last to lose 
their leaves. — 

C. I should say he is in such a condition that tapping is 
impossible: — 

[ 183 ] 



THOREAU 

"The moon has set, the Pleiades are gone ; 
'T is the mid-noon of night ; the hour is by, 
And yet I watch alone," 

says Sappho in Percival. 

T. How hollow echoes the frozen road, under the wheels of 
the teamster''s wagon ! The muzzles of the patient steers are 
fringed in ice, and their backs whitened with hoar-frost. For 
all the singing-birds, the chickadees remain; the sawing and 
scraping of the jay and the crows do remotely pertain to 
music. A single night snaps the year in two. In the declara- 
tion of Tang, it is said, O sun, when wilt thou expire.? We 
will die with thee. Percival makes Sappho say, — 

''Sweet mother! I can weave the web no more, 
So much I love the youth, so much I lingering love." 

C. Shadows hang like flocks of ink from the pitch-pines; 
the winter sunset, the winter twilight, falls slowly down and 
congeals the helpless valleys; the sky has a base of lustrous 
apple-green, and then flows softly up to the zenith that ten- 
der roseate flush, like a virgin's cheek when she is refusing 
the youth. Is winter a cheat.'' "Neighbor," as Margaret says 
when she finds Faust is, "lend me your smelling-bottle." The 
weather forms its constitution in our people, and they are 
equal to it. As we catch a morsel of warmth behind this 
sunny rock, I'll sing you a song about old King Cole: — 



[184 ] 



THE LATTER YEAR 

teamsters' song 

How the wind whistled ! how flew the snow ! 
The teamsters knew not if 't were still or no. 
And the trains stood puffing, all kept away back. 
And the drifts lay deep o'er the railroad track ; 
While the snow it flew, and the wind it blew, 
And the teamsters bawled, — what a jolly crew ! 

Their caps are all dressed with the muskrat fur. 

But the colder the weather (the truth I aver). 

Still less do they turn to the soft, silky lining; 

Their ears are of stone,— 'tis easy divining, — 

And their hearts full of joy, while the snow whirls fast. 

And the lash of the North swings abroad on the blast. 

And the sky is steel on the white cloud flecked. 

And the pines are ghosts in their snow-wreaths decked. 

And the stormy surge of the gale is rising 

While the teamster enjoys the tempest surprising. 

With his lugging-sled and his oxen four; 

When the wind roars the hardest, he bawls all the more. 

C. Did you never admire the steady, silent, windless fall of 
the snow in some lead-colored day, silent save the little tick- 
ing of the flakes as they touch the twigs .'' ^ It is chased silver, 
moulded over the pines and oak-leaves. Soft shades hang like 
curtains along the closely draped wood-paths. Frozen apples 
become little cider-vats. The old, crooked apple-trees, frozen 
stiff* in the pale shivering sunlight that appears to be dying 
of consumption, gleam forth like the heroes of one of Dante''s 

1 This was quoted by an English reviewer as one of the best descriptions 
of nature by Thoreau. But in fact it was all written by me. w. e. c. 

[185] 



THOREAU 

cold hells; we would not mind a change in the mercury of 
the dream. The snow crunches under the foot, the chopper's 
axe rings funereally through the tragic air. At early morn 
the frost on button -bushes and willows was silvery, and every 
stem and minutest twig and filamentary weed became a sil- 
ver thing, while the cottage-smokes came up salmon-colored 
into that oblique day. At the base of ditches were shooting 
crystals, like the blades of an ivory-handled pen-knife, and 
rosettes and favors, fretted of silver, on the flat ice. The little 
cascades in the brook were ornamented with transparent 
shields, and long candelabrums, and spermaceti-colored fools' 
caps, and plaited jellies, and white globes, with the black 
water whirling along transparently underneath. The sun comes 
out, and all at a glance rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and em- 
eralds start into intense life on the angles of the snow-crystals. 

T. You remember that Dryden says, "common-sense is a 
rule in everything but matters of faith and revelation." 

C. Because he lived in WilPs coffee-house. He would have 
had an ideal sense, had he experienced a New England win- 
ter. Frost is your safest shoe-leather in the marshes. How red 
the andromeda-leaves have turned! Snow and ice remind us 
of architecture. No lathe ever made such handsome scrolls 
and friezes. 

T. And to the arctic man these cold matters make paradise. 
As Kudlago, the Eskimo, who was going home aboard ship 
from warmer climes, cried, in his dying moment, " Teiko-se Koy 
teiko-se KoV — Do you see ice, do you see ice.^^ 

You once wrote this: — 

[ 186] 



THE LATTER YEAR 

"By fall and fount, by gleaming hill. 
And sheltered farmhouse still and gray, 

By broad, wild marsh and wood-set rill. 
Dies cold and sere the winter's day. 
Oh, icy sunlight, fade away ! 

"Thou pale magnificence of fate! 
Thy arch is but the loitering cloud, 

A tall pine-wood thy palace-gate. 
The alder-buds thy painted crowd. 
Some far-off road thy future proud. 
Much cold security allowed." 

C. Art and architecture, I suppose, you consider the same 
thing. If I visited galleries where pictures are preserved, I 
would go now, though Hawthorne says he would as soon see 
a basilisk as one of the old pictures at the Boston Athenaeum. 
I think the fine art of Goethe and company very dubious; 
and it is doubtful whether all this talk about prints of the 
old Italian school means anything (Giotto and the rest). It 
may do very well for idle gentlemen. 

E. I reply, there is a fire to every smoke. There were a few 
Anakim who gave the thing vogue by their realism. If Odin 
wrought in iron or in ships, these worked as rancorously in 
paint. Michel Angelo, Ribeira (the man that made the skull 
and the monk, who is another skull looking at it), and the 
man who made in marble the old Torso Hercules ; the Phidias, 
man or men, who made the Parthenon friezes, had a drastic 
style, which a blacksmith or a stone-mason would say was 
starker than their own. And I adhere to Van Waagen's be- 

[ 187 ] 



THOREAU 

lief, that there is a pleasure from works of art which nothing 
else can yield. Yes, we should have a water-color exhibition 
in Boston; but I should like better to have water-color tried 
in the art of writing. Let our troubadours have one of these 
Spanish slopes of the dry ponds or basins which run from 
Walden to the river at Fairhaven, in their September dress 
of color, under a glowering sky, — the Walden sierras given 
as a theme, — and they required to daguerreotype that in good 
words. 

C. I will do my best; but, as we were speaking of archi- 
tecture, remember that this art consists in the imitation of 
natural Principles, and not like the other arts in the imitation 
of natural Forms. 

E. I never know the reason why our people have not reached 
some appropriate style of architecture. In Italy and Switzer- 
land and England, the picturesque seems to spring forth from 
the soil, in the shapes of buildings, as well seasoned as its trees 
and flowers themselves. But look at the clapboard farmhouse 
we are passing ! Is there not a needless degree of stiffness and 
too little ornamentation.'' 

C. Moderate your criticism, my dear Gilpin: utility lies at 
the bottom of our village architecture; the structure springs 
out of that. This simple edifice, created out of white pine- 
boards and painted white ; this case of shingles and clapboards 
appears to its owner — who built it and lives in it — anything 
but ugly or unpicturesque : so far from it, it fits him like a 
shell. Our climate has something to answer for with respect to 
this scarcity of ornament and beauty. The subtle influence of 

[188] 



THE LATTER YEAR 

the weather crops out in the very clapboards, as it does also 
in the garments of the farmer, who gets their benefits: the 
untamable burning summer, the fatally penetrative winter, 
with warm places sometimes intercalated, when the honey-bees 
come forth and the black ploughed fields shine like a horse 
after he has been rubbed down. Brick and stone are too damp, 
and the wall-paper will mould and the cellar run with water, 
even in the dry est wooden house, unless it be warmed through- 
out, so pungent is the condensing essence of winter. Then, if 
you put on outside adorning, it will be warred upon to such 
a degree by the elements as to be scarcely appropriate to the 
plain fancies of our farmers : the face of the house is only a 
mirror of the climate. The roof should have sufficient steep- 
ness to carry off rain and snow readily, with as few breaks 
and angles as possible; the windows not too large, — in fact, 
warmth and coolness must, in one of these New England 
houses, be consulted at the same time, situated as they are in 
an excessive climate. On the sea-coast the old houses are usu- 
ally one story high, thus offering the least surface to the wind. 
The low cottage, all on one floor, will not keep us cool in 
summer; and the high Italian style is a comb of ice in Feb- 
ruary. Then I know that Mr. Gilpin censures the location of 
the farm-buildings so close upon the road, and that he wishes 
to set them at the end of an avenue a long distance from the 
entrance-gate ; that he equally detests the position of the barn 
within a few rods of the house, — privacy, good taste, refine- 
ment, as he says, are thus all sacrificed at one blow. Our 
farmers cut the timber for their mansions in their own woods, 

[189] 



THOREAU 

shape it themselves, and bring it upon the ground. Utihty, 
economy, comfort, and use, — a dry, warm cellar, a sweet, airy 
milk-room, a large wood-shed, a barn with its cellars and ac- 
commodations, and all in the most solid style, — these matters 
make the study of the farmer. He desires a house to live in, 
not to look at. He must have a pump in the kitchen and one 
in the cow-yard; and the kitchen, indeed, needs to be much 
considered. It should be warm, airy, well lighted, connected 
with cellar, shed, yard, road, — and in fact it is a room in use 
most of the time. The barn and house must be placed with 
reference to the farm itself: near a village, school, church, 
store, post-office, station, and the like. All this, it is true, has 
little to do with the fine art of architecture. Our native demo- 
crat, whose brains, boots, and bones are spent in composing 
a free republic and earning money, is growing up to the fine 
arts, even if at present utility sways the balance. 

T. This creature, whose portrait you have thus fancifully 
drawn, looks like a mere machine for gravitating to pork and 
potatoes, an economical syllogism. I say beauty must have 
an equal place with utility, if not a precedent. Your farmer 
shirks architecture and landscape-gardening, with one leg in 
the barn and the other in the kitchen, and the compost -heap 
in the midst; and whose highest ambition is to have a patent- 
leather top to his carriage. Go to! you libel my jolly country- 
man. He is no such thieving rat as this, with a singed tail and 
his ears snipped off. The duke king of T'se had a thousand 
teams, each of four horses; but on the day of his death the 
people did not praise him for a single virtue. 

[190] 



THE LATTER YEAR 

C. O brother Gilpin ! hearken ere you die. Those inveterate 
prejudices of yours for Vitruvius and Inigo Jones have left 
you too little sympathy with the industrious, able yeoman of 
New England. I have but drawn a few lines of his portrait. 
The climate is close, the soil difficult, the clapboard edifice 
not alhu'ing in its aspect. Let this be so: the creator of it, 
the citizen, stands up like a king in the midst of the local 
penury. How well he can write and cipher! how intelligent! 
He receives the news from all lands each day in his paper, 
and has his monthly journals and lyceum lectures. There is 
a sweetness, a native pride, in the man, that overtops the 
rugged necessities of his condition, and shoots its fine branches 
heavenward. His healthful economic industry, and that prac- 
tical education derived from a constant use of natural ele- 
ments, and a life-long struggle against difficulties, renders 
him incredibly expert and capable of seizing all expedients 
whereby he can better his conditions. The New England 
farmer has proved that an independent man, a democratic 
citizen, on a poor soil and in unfavorable positions, can over- 
come the outward obstacles. He has solved the problem of 
democracy, and must give place to some new forms of so- 
ciety, when all the arts shall be employed in the construction 
of the estate. 

E. "Boon nature yields each day a brag which we now first behold, 
And trains us on to slight the new as if it were the old ; 
And blest is he who playing deep, yet haply asks not why. 
Too busy with the crowded day to fear to live or die." 

[191 ] 



THOREAU 



WALDEN 



C. I believe you take some note of the seasons. Pray, what 
is this? On our old path to Walden Pond I cannot really de- 
cide whether I or the world have had the opiate. Assuredly it 
must be autumn, if it is not summer. How tacitly the pond 
sleeps ! These pine-stumps, after the pitch is dry, make excel- 
lent seats. The semi-clouded sky images itself so truthfully in 
the slumbering water that sky and water form one piece, and 
the glancing swallows flying above that invisible surface seem 
to be playing with their own images reversed. Not with the 
very utmost scrutiny can I distinguish between the twain. 
And so you think the superiorities of the Englishman grow 
out of his insular climate. Shakespeare"'s beauties were never 
cradled on the rack of a New English summer. If our land- 
scape stew with heat, the brain becomes another stew-pan. As 
most of our days are unutterably brilliant, I enjoy the few 
scattered gray and lowering ones, half-shade and half-shine, 
the negative days. 

E. In the turbulent beauty 
Of a gusty autumn day, 
Poet on a sunny headland 
Sighed his soul away. 
Farms the sunny landscape dappled, 
Swan-down clouds dappled the farms. 
Cattle lowed in hollow distance 
Where far oaks outstretched their arms. 
Sudden gusts came full of meaning, 
All too much to him they said, 

[ 192 ] 



THE LATTER YEAR 

South winds have long memories, 

Of that be none afraid. 

I cannot tell rude listeners 

Half the tell-tale south wind said, 

'T would bring the blushes of yon maples 

To a man and to a maid. 

The golden loveliness of autumn, — was that your phrase.? 

C. Rather fine, methinks, for the like of me ! 

T. A pretty rustic wreath could be braided of wild berries 
now, including such as the dark blue magical berries of the 
red-osier cornel, the maple-leaved viburnum with its small 
bluish-black berries, and, though so fragile, we might add, for 
the passing hour, the purple might of the great elderberry 
clusters. Why not wreathe wild grapes, prinos, and smilax 
berries together, and the berries of the andromeda.'' Then the 
purple-stemmed golden-rod and the blue gentian"'s flowers 
should not be omitted from this votive offering to Ceres; and 
it should be suspended from a white maple whence we could 
steal a glimpse through the charming Septembrian sunflood, 
with its sense of fulness and everlasting life, over the quiver- 
ing river that is blue and sunny, silvery, golden, and azure at 
once, transparent olives and olive-greens glazed to a complete 
polish, and bounded by the softest shimmer, not transparent. 
I have been reading a report on herbaceous plants. The mere 
names of reeds and grasses, of the milkweeds and the mints, 
the gentians, the mallows and trefoils, are poems. Erigeron, 
because it grows old early, is the old man of the spring; Py- 
rola v/mbellata is called chimaphila, lover of winter, since its 

[ 193 ] 



THOREAU 

green leaves look so cheerful in the snow; also called prince"'s- 
pine. The plantain (Plantago mayor), which follows man wher- 
ever he builds a house, is called by the Indians white-man's 
foot; and I like well to see a mother or one of her girls 
stepping outside of the door with a lamp, for its leaf, at 
night, to dress some slight wound or inflamed hand or foot. 
My old pet, the Liatris, acquires some new interest from be- 
ing an approved remedy for the bite of serpents, and hence 
called rattlesnake's-master. Fire-weed, or Hierackcm, springs 
up abundantly on burnt land. The aromatic fields of dry Gna- 
phalium with its pearly incorruptible flower, and the sweet- 
flags with their bayonet-like flash, wave again, thanks to this 
dull professor, in my memory, on even a cold winter's morn- 
ing. Even the naming of the localities — ponds, shady woods, 
wet pastures, and the like — comforts us. But this heavy coun- 
try professor insults some of my favorites, — the well-beloved 
Lespedeza, for instance; the beautiful Epigcea, or Mayflower, 
— pride of Plymouth hermits. The hills still bear the remem- 
brance of sweet berries ; and I suppose the apple or the huckle- 
berry to have this comfortable fitness to the human palate, 
because they are only the palate inverted: one is man eating, 
and the other man eatable. The Mikania scandens, with its 
purplish-white flowers, now covers the button-bushes and 
willows, by the side of streams; and the large-flowered bidens 
{chrysanthemoides), and various-colored polygonums, white 
and reddish and red, stand high among the bushes and weeds 
by the river-side; and, in modest seclusion, our scarlet impe- 
rialists, the lordly Cardinals. 

[ 194 ] 



THE LATTER YEAR 

C. You have a rare season in your shanty by the pond, 
T. I have gained considerable time for study and writing, 
and proved to my satisfaction that Hfe may be maintained at 
less cost and labor than by the old social plan. Yet I would 
not insist upon any one*'s trying it who has not a pretty good 
supply of internal sunshine; otherwise he would have, I judge, 
to spend too much of his time in fighting with his dark 
humors. To live alone comfortably, we must have that self- 
comfort which rays out of Nature, — a portion of it at least. 

C. I sometimes feel the coldest days 

A beam upon the snow-drift thrown. 
As if the sun's declining rays 

Were with his summer comforts sown. 

The icy marsh, so cold and gray. 

Hemmed with its alder copses brown. 
The ruined walls, the dying day. 

Make in my dream a landscape crown. 

And sweet the walnuts in the fall. 

And bright the apples' lavished store ; 
Thus sweet my winter's pensive call. 

O'er cold, gray marsh, o'er upland hoar. 

And happier still that we can roam 

Free and untrammelled o'er the land. 
And think the fields and clouds are home. 

Not forced to press some stranger's hand. 



[195] 



MULTUM IN PARVO 



"There's nothing left 
Unto Andrugio but Andrugio : and that 
Not mischief, force, distress, nor hell can take ; 
Fortune my fortunes not my mind shall shake." 

Marston. 

"There, your Majesty, what a glimpse, as into infinite extinct Conti- 
nents, filled with ponderous, thorny inanities, invincible nasal drawling 
of didactic Titans, and the awful attempt to spin, on all manner of 
wheels, road-harness out of split cobwebs : Hoom ! Hoom-m-m ! Harness 
not to be had on those terms." 

Carlyle's Frederick. 

" My dears, you are like the heroines of romance, — jewels in abundance, 
but scarce a rag to your backs." 

Madame de Sevione. 



CHAPTER XI 

MULTUM IN PARVO 

As already noticed, Thoreau believed that one of the arts of 
life was to make the most out of it. He loved the multum in 
parvo, or pot-luck; to boil up the little into the big. Thus, 
he was in the habit of saying, — Give me healthy senses, let 
me be thoroughly alive, and breathe freely in the very flood- 
tide of the living world. But this should have availed him 
little, if he had not been at the same time copiously endowed 
with the power of recording what he imbibed. His senses truly 
lived twice. 

Many thousands of travellers pass under the telegraph 
poles, and descry in them only a line of barked chestnuts: to 
our poet-naturalist they came forth a Dodona''s sacred grove, 
and like the old Grecian landscapes followed the phantasy of 
our Concord Orpheus, twanging on their road. 

{Thoreaiis Journal^ September 3, 1851.) "As I went under 
the new telegraph wire, I heard it vibrating like a harp high 
overhead; it was as the sound of a far-off glorious life; a su- 
pernal life which came down to us, and vibrated the lattice- 
work of this life of ours, — an iEolian harp. It reminded me, 
I say, with a certain pathetic moderation, of what finer and 
deeper stirrings I was susceptible, which grandly set all argu- 
ment and dispute aside; a triumphant though transient exhi- 
bition of the truth. It told me, by the finest strain that a hu- 
man ear can hear, — yet conclusively and past all refutation, 

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— that there were higher (infinitely higher) planes of life, 
which it behooved me not to forget. As I was entering the 
Deep Cut,^ the wind, which was conveying a message to me 
from Heaven, dropt it on the wire of the telegraph, which it 
vibrated as it past. I instantly sat down on a stone at the foot 
of the telegraph pole, and attended to the communication. It 
merely said : ' Bear in mind. Child, and never for an instant 
forget, that there are higher planes, infinitely higher planes 
of life than this thou art now travelling on. Know that the 
goal is distant and is upward, and is worthy all your life's 
efforts to attain to.' And then it ceased; and tho' I sat some 
minutes longer, I heard nothing more." 

(September 12.) "There is every variety and degree of in- 
spiration, from mere fulness of life to the most rapt mood. A 
human soul is played on even as this wire; which now vibrates 
slowly and gently, so that the passer can hardly hear it; and 
anon the sound swells and vibrates with such intensity as if it 
would rend the wire, as far as the elasticity and tension of the 
wire permits; and now it dies away and is silent; and though 
the breeze continues to sweep over it, no strain comes from it, 
and the traveller hearkens in vain. It is no small gain to have 
this wire stretched through Concord, though there is no office 
here. I make my own use of the telegraph, without consulting 
the Directors; like the sparrows, which, I observe, use it ex- 
tensively for a perch. Shall I not go to this office, to hear if 
there is any communication for me, as steadily as to the Post- 
office in the Village.'*"''' 

1 Of the Fitchburg Railroad, towards Lincoln. 
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MULTUM IN PARVO 

{September 33.) "The stronger winds of autumn have begun 
to blow, and the telegraph-harp has sounded loudly. I heard 
it especially this afternoon, — the tone varying with the ten- 
sion of different parts of the wire. The sound proceeds from 
near the posts, where the vibration is apparently more rapid. 
I put my ear to one post, and it seemed to me as if every pore 
of the wood was filled with music. It labored with the strain 
as if every fibre was affected, and being seasoned or tuned, — 
rearranged according to a new and more harmonious law. 
Every swell and change and inflection of tone pervaded and 
seemed to proceed from the wood, — a divine tree or wood, — 
as if its very substance was transmuted. 

"What a recipe for preserving wood, — perchance to pre- 
serve it from rotting, — to fill its pores with music! How this 
wild tree from the forest, stripped of its bark and set up here, 
rejoices to transmit this music ! When no music proceeds from 
the wire, on applying my ear I hear the hum within the en- 
trails of the wood, — the oracular tree acquiring, accumulating 
the prophetic fury ! The resounding wood ! how much the 
ancients would have made of it ! To have a harp on so great 
a scale, girdling the very earth, and played on by the winds 
of every latitude and longitude; and that harp (as it were) 
the manifest blessing of Heaven on a work of Man''s! Shall we 
not add a tenth Muse to the immortal Nine, and say that the 
invention was divinely honored and distinguished on which 
the Muse has condescended to smile .f^ is the magic medium of 
communication for mankind? May we read that the ancients 
stretched a wire round the earth, attaching it to the trees of 

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THOREAU 

the forest, by which they sent messages by one named Elec- 
tricity, father of Lightning and Magnetism, swifter far than 
Mercury, — the stern commands of war and the news of peace, 
— and that the winds caused this wire to vibrate, so that it 
emitted an ^ohan music in all the lands through which it 
passed, as if to express the satisfaction of the Gods in this 
invention? Yet this is fact; and we have yet attributed the 
invention to no god, 

"The Telegraph-harp sounds strongly in the midst of the 
rain. I put my ear to the tree, and I hear it working terribly 
within; and anon it swells into a clear tone which seems to 
concentrate in the core of the tree; for all the sound seems 
to proceed from the wood. It is as if you had entered some 
world-famous cathedral, resounding to some vast organ. The 
fibres of all things have their tension, and are strained like 
the strings of a lyre, I feel the very ground tremble under- 
neath my feet as I stand near the post. This wire vibrates 
with great power, as if it would strain and rend the wood. 
What an awful and fateful music it must be to the worms in 
the wood! No better vermifuge were needed. As the wood of 
an old Cremona — its very fibre perchance harmoniously 
transposed, and educated to resound melody — has brought a 
great price, so, methinks, these telegraph posts should bear 
a great price with musical instrument makers. They are pre- 
pared to be the material of harps for ages to come; as it were, 
put a-soak and seasoning in music." 

Much more was he, who drew this ravishing noise off a stale 
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MULTUM IN PARVO 

post, a golden wire of communication with the blessed divini- 
ties! With poetic insight he married practical perception; 
avoiding that flying off in space, like the writings of some 
who pursued the leading of the Rev. Bismiller, where there 
is the theatrical breadth of a pasteboard sky, with not much 
life rolling in it, 

"But troops of smoothing people that coUaud 
All that we do." 

Or, as he observes, "Not till after several months does an in- 
fant find its hands, and it may be seen looking at them with 
astonishment, holding them up to the light; and so also it 
finds its toes. How many faculties there are which we have 
never found ! We want the greatest variety within the small- 
est compass, and yet without glaring diversity, and we have 
it in the color of the withered oak -leaves." He speaks of fleets 
of yellow butterflies, and of the gray squirrels on their wind- 
ing way, on their unweariable legs. Distant thunder is the 
battle of the air. "A cow looking up at the sky has an 
almost human or wood-god, faun-like expression, and re- 
minded me of some frontispiece to Virgil's Bucolics. When 
the red-eye {Vireo) ceases, then, I think, is a crisis. The 
pigeons, with their quivet, dashed over the Duganne desert."" 
When the snow-birds flew ofi", their wave actually broke over 
him, as if he were a rock. He sees two squirrels answering 
one to the other, as it were, like a vibrating watchspring, — 
they withdrew to their airy houses. . . . "When turning my 
head I looked at the willowy edges of Cyanean meadow, and 

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THOREAU 

onward to the sober-colored but fine-grained Clam-shell hills, 
about which there was no glitter, I was inclined to think 
that the truest beauty was that which surrounded us, but 
which we failed to discern; that the forms and colors which 
adorn our daily life, not seen afar in the horizon, are our 
fairest jewelry. The beauty of Clam-shell hill near at hand, 
with its sandy ravines, in which the cricket chirps, — this is 
an occidental city, not less glorious than we dream of in the 
sunset sky. 

"At Clematis Brook I perceive that the pods or follicles of 
the common milkweed {Asclepias syriaca) now point upward. 
They are already bursting. I release some seeds with the long, 
fine silk attached: the fine threads fly apart at once (open 
with a spring), and then ray themselves out into a hemi- 
spherical form, each thread freeing itself from its neighbor, 
and all reflecting rainbow or prismatic tints. The seeds beside 
are furnished with wings, which plainly keep them steady, 
and prevent their whirling round. I let one go, and it rises 
slowly and uncertainly at first, now driven this way, then 
that, by currents which I cannot perceive, and I fear it will 
shipwreck against the neighboring wood; but no! as it ap- 
proaches, it surely rises above it, and then, feeling the strong 
north wind, it is borne off" rapidly in the opposite direction, 
ever rising higher and higher, and tossing and heaved about 
with every fluctuation of the gale, till at a hundred feet 
above the earth, and fifty rods ofi', steering south, I lose 
sight of it. I watched this milkweed-seed, for the time, with 
as much interest as his friends did Mr. Lauriat disappearing 

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MULTUM IN PARVO 

in the skies. How many myriads go sailing away at this sea- 
son, — high over hill and meadow and river, to plant their 
race in new localities, — on various tacks, until the wind lulls, 
who can tell how many miles ! And for this end these silken 
streamers have been perfecting all summer, snugly packed in 
this light chest, a prophecy not only of the fall, but of future 
springs. Who could believe in the prophecies of a Daniel or 
of Miller, that the world would end this summer, while one 
milkweed with faith matured its seeds? Densely packed in a 
little oblong chest, armed with soft, downy prickles, and lined 
with a smooth, silky lining, lie some hundreds of seeds, pear- 
shaped, or like a steelyard's poise, which have derived their 
nutriment through a band of extremely fine, silken threads, 
attached by their extremities to the core. At length, when 
the seeds are matured and cease to require nourishment from 
the parent plant, being weaned, and the pod with dryness 
and frost bursts, the extremities of the silken thread detach 
themselves from the core, and from being the conduits of 
nutriment to the seed become the buoyant balloon which, 
like some spiders' webs, bear the seeds to new and distant 
fields. They merely serve to buoy up the full-fed seeds, far 
finer than the finest thread. Think of the great variety of 
balloons which, at this season, are buoyed up by similar 
means. I am interested in the fate, or success, of every such 
venture which the autumn sends forth." 

A well-known writer says he looked at the present moment 
as a man does upon a card upon which he has staked a con- 
siderable sum, and who seeks to enhance its value as much as 

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THOREAU 

he can without exaggeration. Thoreau had a like practice, — 
the great art is judiciously to limit and isolate one''s self, and 
life is so short we must miss no opportunity of giving plea- 
sure to one another. No doubt our author''s daily writing, his 
careful observation in his own mind, lay as a mass of gold, 
out of which he should coin a good circulating medium for 
the benefit of other minds. Nothing which has not sequence 
is of any value in life. And he held to an oft-repeated dic- 
tum, "Whatever is very good sense must have been common- 
sense in all times. I fairly confess I have served myself all I 
could by writing: that I made use of the judgment of authors, 
dead and living. If I have written well, let it be considered it 
is what no man can do without good sense, — a quality that 
renders one not only capable of being a good writer, but a 
good man. To take more pains and employ more time cannot 
fail to produce more complete pieces. The ancients constantly 
applied to art, and to that single branch of an art to which 
their talent was most powerfully bent; and it was the busi- 
ness of their lives to correct and finish their works for pos- 
terity: — 

''Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favors call ; 
She comes unlook'd for, if she comes at all. — 
Who pants for glory finds but short repose." 

Then thinkers are so varied. The Mahometans taught fate 
in religion, and that nothing exists that does not suppose its 
contrary. Some believe that cork-trees grow merely that we 
may have stoppers to our bottles. St. Augustine, in his "City 
of God," mentions a man who could perspire when he pleased. 

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MULTUM IN PARVO 

Napoleon classed the Old and New Testaments, and the 
Koran, under the head of politics. One says, a fact of our 
lives is valuable, not according as it is true, but as it is signifi- 
cant. Thoreau would scarcely have upheld this. But he could 
assert "that no greater evil can happen to any one than to 
hate reasoning. Man is evidently made for thinking: this is 
the whole of his dignity, and the whole of his merit. To think 
as he ought is the whole of his duty." 

After our dear lover of Nature had retired from Walden, a 
rustic rhymer^ hung up on the walls of his deserted sanctuary 
some irregular verses, as an interpretation: — 

WALDEN HERMITAGE 

Who bricked this chimney small 

I well do know ; 

Know who spread the mortar on the wall. 

And the shingles nailed through ; 

Yes, have seen thee. 

Thou small, rain-tinted hermitage ! 

And spread aside the pitch-pine tree 

That shaded the brief edge 

Of thy snug roof, — 

'T was water-proof! 

Have seen thee, Walden lake ! 
Like burnished glass to take 
With thy daguerreotype 
Each cloud, each tree. 
More firm yet free : 

1 Channing. 

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THOREAU 

Have seen and known, — 
Yes, as I hear and know 
Some echo's faintest tone. 
All, all have fled, 
Man, and cloud, and shed. 

''What man was this. 

Who thus could build. 

Of what complexion, 

At what learning skilled ? 

Is 't the lake I see down there. 

Like a glass of simmering air?" 

So might that stranger say. 

To him I might reply, — 

''You ask me for the man. Hand yesterday. 

Or to-morrow, or a star from the sky : 

More mine are they than he ; 

But that he lived, I tell to thee. 

"That man's heart was true, 

As the sky in living blue, 

And the old contented rocks 

That the mountains heap in blocks. 

Wilt dare to do as he did. 

Dwell alone and bide thy time ? 

Not with lies be over-rid. 

And turn thy griefs to rhyme .'' 

True ! do you call him true .'' 

Look upon the eaglet's eye. 

Wheeled amid the freezing blue. 

In the unfathomable sky. 

With cold and blasts and light his speed to try ! 

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MULTUM IN PARVO 

''And should I tell thee that this man was good? 

Never thought his neighbor harm. 

Sweet was it where he stood. 

Sunny all, and warm. 

Good? 

So the rolling star seems good. 

That miscalculates not, 

Nor sparkles even a jot 

Out of its place, — 

Period of unlettered space." 

Might once more some stranger ask, 

I should reply : 

''Why this man was high, 

And lofty, is not his task. 

Nor mine, to tell : 

Springs flow from the invisible. 

But on this shore he used to play ; 

There his boat he hid away. 

And where has this man fled to-day? 

Mark the small, gray hermitage 

Touch yon curved lake's sandy edge ; 

The pines are his you firmly see. 

"He never goes,— 

But thou must come. 

As the wind blows ; 

He surely sits at home. 

In his eye the thing must stand, 

In his thought the world command ; 

As a clarion shrills the morn. 

On his arms the world be borne. 

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THOREAU 

Beat with thy paddle on the boat, 
Midway the lake, — the wood repeats 
The ordered blow ; the echoing note 
Has ended in the ear, yet its retreats 
Contain more possibilities ; 
And in this Man the nature lies 
Of woods so green, 
And lakes so sheen. 
And hermitages edged between," 

Chatterton, a literary disciple, whose shanty stood on Lon- 
don streets, thus vents Ms history: "I am quite familiar at 
the Chapter Coffee-house, and know all the geniuses there. A 
character is now unnecessary: an author carries his character 
in his pen. Good God, how superior is London to that des- 
picable Bristol ! The poverty of authors is a common observa- 
tion, but not always a true one. No author can be poor who 
understands the arts of booksellers. No: it is my pride, my 
damned, native, unconquerable pride, that plunges me into 
distraction." And another asks, "What could Stephen Duck 
do? what could Chatterton do.? Neither of them had oppor- 
tunities of enlarging their stock of ideas. No man can coin 
guineas but in proportion as he has gold." Even that touch 
upon booksellers' arts did not prevent our brother from starv- 
ing to death three months after in London. 

Thoreau would not have said, with Voltaire, ".4A, croyez- 
moi, Verreur a son m^r'ite^'' — believe me, sin has something 
worthy in it, — which is the same as Goethe's "Even in God 
I discover defects"; but he would recognize the specific value 

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of events. The directions of men are singular. He knew one 
in Sudbury who used to fat mud-turtles, having a great appe- 
tite for them ; another used to eat those imposthumes on wild 
rose-bushes, which are made by worms and contain an ounce 
of maggots each. But why criticise poor human nature, when 
a black snake that has just laid her eggs on a tussock in the 
meadow (some were hatching, and some hatched), upon being 
alarmed, swallows them all down in a lump for safe keeping, 
and no doubt produces them afresh at a convenient time? Na- 
ture, as Thoreau said, does have her dawn each day; and her 
economical code of laws does not consult taste or high art, as 
in the above salvation of so inconvenient a morsel as a snake's 
offspring. He sometimes caught sight of the inside of things 
by artificial means; and notices that the young mud-turtle is a 
hieroglyphic of snappishness a fortnight before it is hatched, 
like the virtue of bottled cider. "When the robin ceases, then 
I think is an exit, . . . the concert is over." He could see a 
revolution in the end of a bird's song, and he used working 
abroad, like the artist who painted out-of-doors, and believed 
that lights and a room were absurdities, and that a picture 
could be painted anywhere. So must a man be moral every- 
where, and he must not expect that Nature will take a scrub- 
bing-brush and clean her entries for his steps, seeing how 
sentimental a fellow is our brother. 

The Bomhyx pini, the pine spider, the most destructive of 
all forest insects, is infested, so says Ratzeburg, by thirty-five 
parasitical ichneumonidse. And infirmity that decays the wise 
doth ever make the better fool. Wisdom is 

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THOREAU 

''Not to know at large of things remote 
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know 
That which before us lies in daily use." 

The love of our poet-naturalist for the open air, his hy- 
paethral character, has been dwelt upon. Such was his enjoy- 
ment in that outward world, it seemed as if his very self 
became a cast of nature, with the outlines of humanity fair 
and perfect; but that intensity of apprehension did, with cer- 
tain minds, accuse him of egotism. Not self, but rather that 
creation of which he was a part, asserted itself there. As it 
was said : — 

"For chiefly here thy worth, — 
Greatly in this, that unabated trust. 
Amplest reliance on the unceasing truth 
That rules and guides the darting sphere about us, — 
Truth that drives thoughtful round the unthinking ball. 
And buds the ignorant germs on life and time. 
Of men and beasts and birds, themselves the sport 
Of a clear, healthful prescience, still unspent." 

He admired plants and trees: truly, he loved them. Doubt 
not it was their infinite beauty which first impressed them on 
him ; but then he greatly held that art of science which, tak- 
ing up the miscellaneous crowd, impaled them in the picket- 
fences of order, and coined a labelled scientific plan from the 
phenomenal waste-basket of vulgar observation. A hearty 
crack in Latin he rejoiced at; not merely because he had di- 
gested it early, but as a stencil-tool for the mind. He prized 
a substantial name for a thing beyond most sublunary joys. 

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Name it ! name it ! he might have cried to the blessed fortune. 
"He shall be as a god to me who can rightly define and 
divide. The subjects on which the master did not talk were, — 
extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual 
beings. What the superior man seeks is in himself: what 
the mean man seeks is in others. By weighing we know what 
things are light and what heavy; by measuring we know 
what things are long and what short. It is of the greatest 
importance to measure the motions of the mind." 

" Mills of the gods do slowly wind, 
But they at length to powder grind." 

He loved what the Prussian king says to his brother, — "I 
write this letter with the rough common-sense of a German, 
who speaks wliat he thinks, without employing equivocal 
terms and loose assuagements which disfigure the truth."" But 
it may be feared he would have stopped running, when Fichte 
thus laid his finger on the destination of man : " My conscious- 
ness of the object is only a yet unrecognized consciousness of 
my production of the representation of an object;" although 
he admired Blake's description, — 

''My mother bore me in the southern wild, 

And I am black, but, oh ! my soul is white, — 
White as an angel is the English child. 
But I am black as if bereaved of light." 

For pure, nonsensical abstractions he had no taste. No work 
on metaphysics found room on his shelves unless by suffer- 
ance; there being some Spartan metaphysicians who send you 

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THOREAU 

their books, — like the witty lecturer who sent cards of invita- 
tion to his lectures, and then you had to come. Neither did 
he keep moral treatises, though he would not say, "what we 
call good is nothing else than egoism painted with verbiage,"" 
like the Frenchman. "Stick your nose into any gutter, entity, 
or object, this of Motion or another, with obstinacy, you will 
easily drown if that be your determination. Time, at its own 
pleasure, will untie the knot of destiny, if there be one, like 
a shot of electricity through an elderly, sick household cat." 
We do not bind ourselves to men by exaggerating those pe- 
culiarities in which we happen to differ from them. 

{August '21-^7^ 1851.) "I perceive on the blue vervain 
{Verbena hastata) that only one circle of buds, about half a 
dozen, blossoms at a time; and there are about thirty circles 
in the space of three inches; while the next circle of buds 
above at the same time shows the blue. Thus this triumphant 
blossoming circle travels upward, driving the remaining buds 
off into space. It is very pleasant to measure the progress of 
the season by this and similar clocks. So you get not the ab- 
solute but the true time of the season. 

"I have now found all the Hawkweeds. Singular are these 
genera of plants, — plants manifestly related, yet distinct. 
They suggest a history to nature, — a natural history in a new 
sense. I saw some smilax vines in the swamp, which were con- 
nected with trees ten feet above the ground wherein they 
grew, and four or five feet above the surrounding bushes. Have 
the trees and shrubs by which they once climbed been cut 
down? or perchance do the young and flexible shoots blow up 

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in high winds, and fix themselves? Any anomaly in vegetation 
makes Natiure seem more real and present in her working, — 
as the various yellow and red excrescences on young oaks. I 
am affected as if it were a different nature that produced 
them; as if a poet were there who had designs in his head. It 
is remarkable that animals are often obviously, manifestly, re- 
lated to plants which they feed upon or live among; as cater- 
pillars, butterflies, tree-toads, partridges, chewinks; I noticed 
a yellow spider on a golden-rod. As if every condition might 
have its expression in some form of animated being. 

"The interregnum in the blossoming of flowers being well 
over, many small flowers blossom now in the low grounds, 
having just reached their summer. It is now dry enough, and 
they feel the heat their tenderness required. Golden-rods, and 
asters and John''s-wort, though they have made demonstra- 
tions, have not yet commenced to reign. Tansy is already [Au- 
gust ^4-] getting stale; it is perhaps the first conspicuous yellow 
flower that passes off" the stage. Elderberries are ripe. What a 
miserable name has the Gratiola aurea^ — hedge-hyssop ! whose 
hedge does it grow by, pray, in this part of the world? 

" We love to see Nature fruitful in whatever kind. I like to 
see the acorns plenty on the shrub-oaks; aye, and the night- 
shade berries. It assures us of her vigor, and that she may 
equally bring forth the fruits we prize. I love to see the po- 
tato balls numerous and large, as I go through a plough-field, 
— the plant thus bearing fruit at both ends; saying, ever and 
anon, 'Not only these tubers I offer you for the present; but 
if you will have new varieties (if these do not satisfy you), 

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THOREAU 

plant these seeds.' Fruit of the strong soils containing potash, 
the vintage is come, the olive is ripe. Why not, for my coat 
of arms, 'for device a cluster of potato-balls in a potato field'.? 
Do they not concern New Englanders a thousand times more 
than all her grapes? How they take to the virgin soil! Rubus 
sempervirens, the small, low blackberry, is now in fruit; Me- 
deola Virginica, the cucumber root, is now in green fruit. The 
Poll/gala cniciata, cross-leaved polygala, with its handsome 
calyx and leaves, has a very sweet, but, as it were, intermittent 
fragrance, as of checkerberry and Mayflower combined." 

On such Latin thorns do botanists hang the Lilies of the 
Vale, — things that can only be crucified into order upon the 
justification of a splitting-hair microscope. We are assured 
they have no nerves, sharing the comfort with naturalists. 

"The ivy-leaves are turning red; fall dandelions stand thick 
in the meadows. The leaves on the hardback are somewhat 
appressed, clothing the stem and showing their downy under- 
sides, like white waving wands. I walk often in drizzly weather, 
for then the small weeds (especially if they stand on bare 
ground), covered with raindrops like beads, look more beauti- 
ful than ever. They are equally beautiful when covered with 
dew, fresh and adorned, almost spirited away in a robe of 
dewdrops. At the Grape Cliffs the few bright red leaves of the 
tupelo contrast with the polished green ones, — the tupelos 
with drooping branches. The grape-vines, over-running and 
bending down the maples, form little arching bowers over the 
meadow five or six feet in diameter, like parasols held over 
the ladies of the harem in the East. The rhomboidal joints of 

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the tick trefoil (Desmodium paniculatum) adhere to my clothes, 
and thus disperse themselves. The oak-ball is a dirty drab 
now. When I got into the Lincoln road, I perceived a singu- 
lar sweet scent in the air, which I suspected arose from some 
plant now in a peculiar state owing to the season [September 
11]; but though I smelled everything around I could not 
detect it, but the more eagerly I smelled the further I seemed 
to be from finding it; but when I gave up the search, again 
it would be wafted to me, the intermitting perfume! It was 
one of the sweet scents which go to make the autumn air, — 
which fed my sense of smell rarely, and dilated my nostrils. 
I felt the better for it. Methinks that I possess the sense 
of smell in greater perfection than usual, and have the habit 
of smelling of every plant I pluck. How autumnal now is 
the scent of ripe grapes by the road-side! The cross-leaved 
polygala emits its fragrance as if at will. You must not hold 
it too near, but on all sides and at all distances. How beauti- 
ful the sprout-land, a young wood thus springing up! Shall 
man then despair? Is he not a sprout-land too.? 

"In Cohosh Swamp the leaves have turned a very deep red, 
but have not lost their fragrance. I notice wild apples grow- 
ing luxuriantly in the midst of the swamp, rising red over 
the colored, painted leaves of the sumac, reminding me that 
they were colored by the same influences, — some green, some 
yellow, some red. I fell in with a man whose breath smelled 
of spirit, which he had drunk. How could I but feel it was 
his OWN spirit that I smelt? A sparrow-hawk, hardly so big 
as a night-hawk, flew over high above my head, — a pretty 

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THOREAU 

little, graceful fellow, too small and delicate to be rapacious. 
I found a grove of young sugar-maples. How silently and yet 
startlingly the existence of these was revealed to me, which I 
had not thought grew in my immediate neighborhood, when 
first I perceived the entire edges of its leaves and their ob- 
tuse sinuses! Such near hills as Nobscot and Nashoba have 
lost all their azure in this clear air, and plainly belong to 
earth. Give me clearness, nevertheless, though my heavens be 
moved further off to pay for it. It is so cold I am glad to sit 
behind the wall; still, the great bidens blooms by the cause- 
way side, beyond the bridge. On Mount Misery were some 
very rich yellow leaves (clear yellow) of the Populus grandi- 
dentata, which still love to wag and tremble in my hands.*" 

This qualification hides the plant celebrated by the en- 
tombed novelist, Walter Scott, when he speaks of — 

''the shade 
By the light quivering aspen made." 

It is a poplar whose leaves are soft and tremulous, and some 
botanist has smashed his Latinity on the little, trembling, 
desponding thing. To Henry these names were a treat, and 
possessed a flavor beyond the title of emperor. 

The river never failed to act as a Pacific for his afternoon, 
and few things gave him so great a delight as a three hours' 
voyage on this mitigated form of Amazon. 

''Seek then, again, the tranquil river's breast. 
July awakes new splendor in the stream. 
Yet more than all, the water-lily's pomp, 
A star of creamy perfume, born to be 
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MULTUM IN PARVO 

Consoler to thy solitary voyage ; 

In vast profusion from the floor of pads, 

They floating swim, with their soft beauty decked. 

Nor slight the pickerel-weed, whose violet shaft 

Controls the tall reed's emerald, and endows 

With a contrasted coloring the shore. 

No work of human art can faintly show 

The unnoticed lustre of these summer plants. 

These floating palaces, these anchored orbs. 

These spikes of untold richness crowning earth. 

The muskrat glides, and perch and pout display 
Their arrowy swiftness, while the minnows dart 
And fright the filmy silver of the pool ; 
And the high-colored bream, a ring of gems. 
Their circular nests scoop in the yellow sands. 
Yet never ask. Why was this beauty wasted 
On these banks.'' nor soon believe that love in vaiu 
Is lavished on the solitude, nor deem 
Absence of human life absence of all ! 
Why is not here an answer to thy thought? 

Or mark in August, when the twilight falls. 
Like wreaths of timid smoke her curling mist 
Poured as from some yet smouldering fire across 
The meadows cool ; whose modest shadows, thrown 
So faintly, seem to fall asleep with day. 
Oh, softly pours the thin and curling mist ! 
Thou twilight hour ! abode of peace how deep. 
May we not envy him who in thee dwells.'' 
And, like thy soft and gently falling beauty. 
His dreams repose on flood-tide of the soul." 

Channing's Near Home. 

[ 219 ] 



THOREAU 

Or let us hear this dear lover of wood and glen, of early 
mom and deep midnight, sing a strain of the autumnal wind 
as it goes hurrying about, regardless of the plucked manni- 
kins freezing amid its polarities: — 

"The wind roars amid the pines like the surf. You can 
hardly hear the crickets for the din, or the cars. Such a blow- 
ing, stirring, bustling day! what does it mean? All light 
things decamp, straws and loose leaves change their places. 
It shows the white and silvery under-sides of the leaves. I 
perceive that some farmers are busy cutting turf now. You 
dry and burn the very earth itself. I see the volumes of 
smoke, — not quite the blaze, — from burning brush, as I 
suppose, far in the western horizon: the farmers' simple en- 
terprises! They improve this season, — which is the dryest, — 
their haying being done and their harvest not begun, to do 
these jobs: burn brush, build walls, dig ditches, cut turf; also 
topping corn and digging potatoes. May not the succory, 
tree-primrose, and other plants, be distributed from Boston 
on the rays of the railroad? The shorn meadows looked of a 
living green at eve, even greener than in spring. This re- 
minded me of the Jinum cordum, the after-math; sicilimenta 
de pratis, the second mowing of the meadow, in Cato. His 
remedy for sprains would be as good in some cases as opo- 
deldoc. You must repeat these words: 'Hauat, hauat, hauat 
ista pista sista damia bodanna ustra.' And his notion of an 
auction would have had a fitness in the South: 'If you wish 
to have an auction, sell off your oil, if it will fetch something, 
and anything in the wine and corn line left over; sell your 

[ mo ] 



MULTUM IN PARVO 

old oxen, worthless sheep and cattle, old wool, hides and 
carts; old tools, old slaves and sick slaves; and if you can 
scrape up any more trash, sell it along with them.' I now be- 
gin to pick wild apples. 

"We scared a calf out of the meadows, which ran, like a 
ship tossed on the waves, over the hills : they run awkwardly, 
— red, oblong squares, tossing up and down like a vessel in a 
storm, with great commotion. I observe that the woodchuck 
has two or more holes, a rod or two apart: one, or the front 
door, where the excavated sand is heaped up; another, not 
so easily discovered, which is very small, round, and without 
sand about it, being that by which he emerged, and smaller 
directly at the surface than beneath, on the principle by 
which a well is dug. I saw a very fat woodchuck on a wall, 
evidently prepared to go into the ground."" 

'''Want and woe which torture us. 
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.'" 

As the woodchuck dines chiefly on crickets, he will not be 
at much expense in seats for his winter quarters. Since the 
anatomical discovery, that the thyroid gland, whose use in 
man is nihil, is for the purpose of getting digested during 
the hibernating jollifications of the woodchuck, we sympa- 
thize less at his retreat. Darwin, who hibernates in science, 
cannot yet have heard of this use of the above gland, or he 
would have derived the human race to that amount from 
the Mus montana, our woodchuck, instead of landing him flat 
on the simiadce, or monkeys. We never can remember that 

[ 221 ] 



THOREAU 

our botanist took a walk that gave him a poor turn or disa- 
greed with him. It is native to him to say, — 

"It was pleasant walking where the road was shaded by a 
high hill, as it can be only in the morning; also, looking 
back, to see a heavy shadow made by some high birches reach- 
ing quite across the road. Light and shadow are sufficient 
contrast and furnish sufficient excitement when we are well. 
Now we were passing a sunshiny mead, pastured with cattle 
and sparkling with dew, — the sound of crows and swallows 
was heard in the air, and leafy-columned elms stood about, 
shining with moisture. The morning freshness and unworldli- 
ness of that domain! When you are starting away, leaving 
your more familiar fields for a little adventure like a walk, you 
look at every object with a traveller's, or at least historical, 
eyes; you pause on the foot-bridge where an ordinary walk 
hardly commences, and begin to observe and moralize. It is 
worth the while to see your native village thus, sometimes. 
The dry grass yields a crisped sound to my feet; the corn- 
stalks, standing in stacks in long rows along the edges of the 
corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets. As soon as berries 
are gone, grapes come. The flowers of the meadow-beauty are 
literally little reddish chalices now, though many still have 
petals, — little cream -pitchers. There was a man in a boat, in 
the sun, just disappearing in the distance around a bend, lift- 
ing high his arms, and dipping his paddles, as if he were a 
vision bound to the land of the blessed, far off as in a picture. 
When I see Concord to purpose, I see it as if it were not real, 
but painted; and what wonder if I do not speak to theef^ 

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MULTUM IN PARVO 

There was nothing our poet loved or sang better, albeit in 
prose, than the early morning: — 

''Alone, despondent? then art thou alone, 
On some near hill-top, ere of day the orb 
In early summer tints the floating heaven. 
While sunk around thy sleeping race o'ershade 
With more oblivion their dim village-roofs. 

Alone? Oh, listen hushed! 
What living hymn awakes such studious air, 
A myriad sounds that in one song converge, 
Just as the added light lifts the far hamlet 
Or distant wood? These are the carols sweet 
Of the unnumbered birds that drench the sphere 
With their prodigious harmony, prolonged 
And ceaseless, so that at no time it dies, — 
Vanquishing the expectation with delay. 
Still crowding notes from the wild robin's larum 
In the walnut's bough, to the veery's flute, 
Who, from the inmost shades of the wet wood, 
His liquid lay rallies in martial trills. 
And mark the molten flecks fast on those skies ; 
They move not, musing on their rosy heights 
In pure, celestial radiance. 

Nor these forms. 
That chiefly must engross and ask thy praise. 
It is a startling theme, this lovely birth. 
Each morn, of a new day, so wholly new, 
So absolutely penetrated by itself, — 
This fresh, this sweet, this ever-living grace. 
This tender joy that still unstinted clothes 
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THOREAU 

An orb of beauty, of all bliss the abode. 

Cast oiF the night, unhinge the dream-clasped brow. 

Step freely forth, exulting in thy joy ; 

Launch off, and sip the dewy twilight time ; 

Come ere the last great stars have fled, ere dawii 

Like a spirit seen, unveils the charm 

Of bosky wood, deep dell, or odorous plain ; 

Ere, blazed with more than gold, some slow-drawn mist 

Retreats its distant arm from the cool meads." 

As in the song, such a "getting up we never did see," — our 
author sallying forth like Don Quixote, ere the stingiest 
farmer commenced milking his cow-yard cistern. All that he 
did was done with order due: the late walk came out at two 
in the morning, and the early one came on at the same crisis. 

''His drink the running stream, his cup the bare 
Of his palm closed, his bed the hard, cold ground." 

Cleanness, punctuality, the observation of the law he truly 
followed. "Treat with the reverence due to age the elders of 
your own family, so that the elders in the families of others 
shall be similarly treated; treat with the kindness due to 
youth the young in your own family, so that the young in 
the families of others shall be similarly treated : do this, and 
the empire may be made to go round in your palm." He 
might have said, with Victor Hugo, "The finest of all altars 
is the soul of an unhappy man who is consoled, and thanks 
God. Nisi Domimts custodierit domiim, in vanum vigilant qtii 
custodiant earn (Unless God watches over our abode, they 
watch in vain who are set to keep it). Let us never fear rob- 

[ 224 ] 



MULTUM IN PARVO 

bers or murderers. They are external and small dangers: let 
us fear ourselves; prejudices are the true thefts, vices the 
fatal murders." His notions about the privileges of real prop- 
erty remind us of the park of King Van, which contained 
seventy square le; but the grass-cutters and the fuel -gatherers 
had the privilege of entrance. He shared it with the people; 
and was it not with reason they looked on it as small ? Of every 
ten things he knew, he had learned nine in conversation; and 
he remembered that between friends frequent reproofs lead to 
distance, and that in serving the neighbor frequent remon- 
strances lead to disgrace. Nor did he follow that old rule of 
the nuns, — Believe Secular men little, Religious still less. He 
was one of those men of education who, without a certain 
livelihood, are able to maintain a fixed pursuit. 

''Thou art not gone, being gone, where'er thou art: 
Thou leav'st in us thy watchful eyes, in us thy loving heart." 



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HIS WRITINGS 



"The dark-colored ivy and the untrodden grove of God, with its myriad 
fruits, sunless and without wind in all storms ; where always the frenzied 
Dionysus dwells." 

Sophocles. 

"When, like the stars, the singing angels shot 
To earth." 

Giles Fletcher. 

"Patience! why, 'tis the soul of peace. 
It makes men look like gods ! The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him was a SuiFerer, 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 



"Friendship has passed me like a ship at sea." 



Decker. 

Festus. 



CHAPTER XII 

HIS WRITINGS 

One of the objects of our poet-naturalist was to acquire 
the art of writing a good English style. So Goethe, that slow 
and artful formalist, spent himself in acquiring a good Ger- 
man style. And what Thoreau thought of this matter of writ- 
ing may be learned from many passages in this sketch, and 
from this among the rest: "It is the fault of some excellent 
writers, and De Quincey*'s first impressions on seeing London 
suggest it to me, that they express themselves with too great 
fulness and detail. They give the most faithful, natural, and 
lifelike account of their sensations, mental and physical, but 
they lack moderation and sententiousness. They do not aflPect 
us as an ineifectual earnest, and a reserve of meaning, like a 
stutterer: they say all they mean. Their sentences are not con- 
centrated and nutty, — sentences which suggest far more than 
they say, which have an atmosphere about them, which do not 
report an old, but make a new impression; sentences which 
suggest on many things, and are as durable as a Roman aque- 
duct: to frame these, — that is the art of writing. Sentences 
which are expressive, towards which so many volumes, so 
much life, went; which lie like boulders on the page up and 
down, or across; which contain the seed of other sentences, 
not mere repetition, but creation; and which a man might 
sell his ground or cattle to build. De Quincey's style is no- 
where kinked or knotted up into something hard and signifi- 

[ 229 J 



THOREAU 

cant, which you could swallow like a diamond, without di- 
gesting."" 

As in the story, "And that 's Peg Woffington"'s notion of an 
actress! Better it, Gibber and Bracegirdle, if you can!"" This 
moderation does,ybr the most part, characterize his works, both 
of prose and verse. They have their stoical merits, their un- 
comfortableness ! It is one result to be lean and sacrificial; 
yet a balance of comfort and a house of freestone on the sunny 
side of Beacon Street can be endured, in a manner, by weak 
nerves. But the fact that our author lived for a while alone 
in a shanty near a pond or stagnum, and named one of his 
books after the place where it stood, has led some to say he 
was a barbarian or a misanthrope. It was a writing-case: — 

'^This, as an amber drop enwraps a bee, 
Covering discovers your quick soul^ that we 
May in your through-shine front your heart's thoughts see." 

Donne. 
Here, in this wooden inkstand, he wrote a good part^ of 
his famous "Walden""; and this solitary woodland pool was 
more to his muse than all oceans of the planet, by the force 
of that faculty on which he was never weary of descanting, 
— Imagination. Without this, he says, human life, dressed in 
its Jewish or other gaberdine, would be a kind of lunatic"'s 
hospital, — insane with the prose of it, mad with the drouth 
of society ""s remainder-biscuits; but add the phantasy, that 
glorious, that divine gift, and then — 

1 The book was written from his journals — not specially at Walden; but 
he did write or edit the "Week" there, w. e. c. 

[ 230 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

''The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all 
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars ; 
And now will view the gods' state and the stars." 

Chapman. 

Out of this faculty was his written experience chiefly con- 
structed, — upon this he lived; not upon the cracked wheats 
and bread-fruits of an outward platter. His essays, those 
masterful creations, taking up the commonest topics; a sour 
apple, an autumn leaf, are features of this wondrous imagina- 
tion of his; and, as it was his very life-blood, he, least of all, 
sets it forth in labored description. He did not bring forward 
his means, or unlock the closet of his MaelzePs automaton 
chess-player. The reader cares not that the writer of a novel, 
with two lovers in hand, should walk out in the fooPs-cap, 
and begin balancing some peacock's feather on his nose. 

''Begin, murderer, — leave thy damnable faces, and begin!" 

He loved antithesis in verse. It could pass for paradox, — 
something subtractive and unsatisfactory, as the four her- 
rings provided by Caleb Balderstone for Ravenswood's dinner: 
come, he says, let us see how miserably uncomfortable we can 
feel. Hawthorne, too, enjoyed a grave, and a pocket full of 
miseries to nibble upon. 

There was a lurking humor in almost all that he said, — 
a dry wit, often expressed. He used to laugh heartily and 
many times in all the interviews I had, when anything in 
that direction was needed. Certainly he has left some exqui- 
sitely humorous pieces, showing his nice discernment; and he 

[ 231 ] 



THOREAU 

has narrated an encounter truly curious and wonderful, — 
the story of a snapping-turtle swallowing a horn-pout. In the 
latest pieces on which he worked he showed an anxiety to 
correct them by leaving out the few innuendoes, sallies, or 
puns, that formerly luxuriated amid the serious pages. No 
one more quickly entertained the apprehension of a jest; 
and his replies often came with a startling promptness, as 
well as perfection, — as if premeditated. This offhand talent 
lay in his habit of deep thought and matiu-e reflection; in 
the great treasury of his wit he had weapons ready furnished 
for nearly all occasions. 

Of his own works, the "Week" was at his death for the 
most part still in the sheets, unbound; a small edition of 
"Walden" was sold in some seven years after its publishing. 
His dealings with publishers (who dealt with him in the 
most mean and niggardly style) affected him with a shyness 
of that class. It was with the utmost difficulty he was paid 
for what he Avrote by the persons who bought his wares; for 
one of his printed articles the note of the publishers was put 
by him in the bank for collection. Of the non-sale of the 
"Week" he said, "I believe that this result is more inspiring 
and better for me than if a thousand had bought my wares. 
It afffects my privacy less, and leaves me freer." Some culti- 
vated minds place "Walden" in the front rank; but both his 
books are so good they will stand on their own merits. His 
latest- written work (the "Excursions" — a collection of lec- 
tures, mainly) is a great favorite with his friends. His works 
are household words to those who have long known them; 

[ 232 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

and the larger circle he is sure, with time, to address will 
follow in our footsteps. Such a treasure as the "Week,"" — so 
filled with images from nature, — such a faithful record of 
the scenery and the people on the banks, — could not fail to 
make a deep impression. Its literary merit is also great; as a 
treasury of citations from other authors, it gives a favorable 
view of his widely extended reading. Few books in this respect 
can be found to surpass it. 

In his discourse of Friendship, Thoreau starts with the 
idea of ^^imderpropping his love by such pure hate, that it 
would end in sympathy," like sweet butter from sour cream. 
And in this: — 

"Two solitary stars, — 
Unmeasured systems far 
Between us roll ; " 

getting off into the agonies of space, where everything freezes, 
yet he adds as inducement, — 

"But by our conscious light we are 
Determined to one pole." 

In other words, there was a pole apiece. He continues the 
antithesis, and says there is "no more use in friendship than 
in the tints of flowers" (the chief use in them); "pathless the 
gulf of feeling yawns," and the reader yawns, too, at the idea 
of tumbling into it. And so he packs up in his mind "all 
the clothes which outward nature wears," like a young lady's 
trunk going to Mount Desert. 

We must not expect literature, in such case, to run its 
[ 233 ] 



THOREAU 

hands round the dial-plate of style with cuckoo repetition: 
the snarls he criticises De Quincey for not getting into are 
the places where his bundles of sweetmeats untie. As in the 
Vendidad, "Hail to thee, O man! who art come from the 
transitory place to the imperishable": — 

''In Nature's nothings be not nature's toy." 

This feature in his style is by no means so much bestowed 
upon his prose as his poetry. In his verse he more than once 
attained to beauty, more often to quaintness. He did not 
court admiration, though he admired fame; and he might 
have said to his reader, — 

"Whoe'er thou beest who read'st this sullen writ. 
Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it." 

He had an excellent turn of illustration. Speaking of the 
debris of Camac, he says: — 

''Erect ourselves, and let those columns lie; 
If Carnac's columns still stand on the plain, 
To enjoy our opportunities they remain." 

The little Yankee squatting on Walden Pond was not de- 
ceived by an Egyptian stone post, or sand heap. In another 
verse: — 

"When life contracts into a vulgar span. 
And human nature tires to be a man, — 
Greece! who am I that should remember thee?" 

And he let Greece slide. At times he hangs up old authors, 
in the blaze of a New England noon. 

[ 234 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

''Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, 
Our Shakespeare's life was rich to live again ; 
Wliat Plutarch read, that was not good nor true, 
Nor Shakespeare's books, unless his books were men." 

''Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour. 
For now I 've business with this drop of dew." 

He could drop Shakespeare; and it were well if both he 
and Dante were prescribed, rather than poured out of bath- 
tubs. Every one must, however, admire the essay of Mr. Brown 
on the Bard of Avon, and the translation of Dante by Mr. 
Black : neatness is the elegance of poverty. 

The following verses are pretty, the last line from Milton's 
"Penseroso," with the change of a syllable. He did not fear to 
collect a good line any more than a good flower: — 

RUMORS FROM AN ^OLIAN HARP 

"There is a vale which none hath seen. 
Where foot of man has never been. 
Such as here lives with toil and strife. 
An anxious and a sinful life. 

There every virtue has its birth. 
Ere it descends upon the earth. 
And thither every deed returns. 
Which in the generous bosom burns. 

There love is warm, and youth is young, 
And poetry is yet unsung ; 
For Virtue still adventures there. 
And freely breathes her native air. 
[ 235 ] 



THOREAU 

And ever^ if you hearken well, 
You still may hear its vesper bell, 
And tread of high-souled men go by, 
Their thoughts conversing with the sky." 

He has no killing single shots, — his thoughts flowed. 

''Be not the fowler's net. 
Which stays my flight. 
And craftily is set 
T allure my sight. 

But be the favoring gale 

That bears me on. 
And still doth iill my sail 

When thou art gone." 

*'Some tender buds were left upon my stem 
In mimicry of life. 



Some tumultuous little rill. 

Purling round its storied pebble. 

Conscience is instinct bred in the liouse. 

Experienced river ! 

Hast thou flowed for ever?" 

As an instance of his humor in verse: — 

" I make ye an ofl^er, 
Ye gods, hear the scoffer ! 
The scheme will not hurt you, 
If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue, 
I have pride still unbended, 

[ 236 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

And blood undescended ; 
I cannot toil blindly, 
Though ye behave kindly. 
And I swear by the rood 
I '11 be slave to no god." 

He early gave us his creed : — 

"Nature doth have her dawn each day. 
But mine are far between ; 
Content, I cry, for sooth to say, 
Mine brightest are, I ween. 

For when my sun doth deign to rise, 

Tliough it be her noontide. 
Her fairest field in shadow lies. 

Nor can my light abide. 

Through his discourse I climb and see. 

As from some eastern hill, 
A brighter morrow rise to me 

Than lieth in her skill. 

As 't were two summer days in one. 

Two Sundays come together, 

Our rays united make one sun. 

With fairest summer weather." 

July 25, 1839. 

This date is for those who, unlike Alfieri, are by nature 
fiot ahnost destitute of curiosity; and the subject, Friendship, 
is for the like: — 

''For things that pass are past, and in this field 

The indeficient spring no winter flaws." 

Fletcher. 

[ 237 ] 



THOREAU 

What subtlety and what greatness in those quatrains ! then 
how truly original, how vague! His Pandora's box of a head 
carried all manner of sweets. No one would guess the theme, 
Yankee though he be. He has that richness which 

''Looks as it is with some true April day. 
Whose various weather strews the world with flowers." 

As he well affirms (if it be applied antithetically), a man 
cannot wheedle nor overawe his genius. Nothing was ever 
so unfamiliar and startling to a man as his own thoughts. 
To the rarest genius it is the most expensive to succumb and 
conform to the ways of the world. It is the worst of lumber 
if the poet wants to float upon the breeze of popularity. The 
bird of paradise is obliged constantly to fly against the wind. 
The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, but the toughest son 
of earth and of heaven. He will prevail to be popular in spite 
of his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He makes us 
free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than to offer 
us the freedom of a city. Orpheus does not hear the strains 
which issue from his lyre, but only those which are breathed 
into it. The poet will write for his peers alone. He never 
whispers in a private ear. The true poem is not that which 
the public read. His true work will not stand in any prince's 
gallery. 

"My life has been the poem I would have writ. 
But I could not both live and utter it." 

"I hearing get, who had but ears, 
And sight, who had but eyes before. 
[ 238 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

I moments live^ who lived but years, 

And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore." 

He has this bit of modesty: — 

THE poet's delay 

*'In vain I see the morning rise, 

In vain observe the western blaze, 
Who idly look to other skies, 
Expecting life by other ways. 

Amidst such boundless wealth ^^■ithout, 

I only still am poor within. 
The birds have sung their summer out. 

But still my spring does not begin. 

Shall I then wait the autumn wind. 

Compelled to seek a milder day, 
And leave no curious nest behind. 

No woods still echoing to my lay.''" 

Again he asks, "Shall I not have words as fresh as my 
thought.'' Shall I use any other man's word.? A genuine 
thought or feeling would find expression for itself, if it had 
to invent hieroglyphics. I perceive that Shakespeare and Mil- 
ton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. To 
say that God has given a man many and great talents, fre- 
quently means that he has brought his heavens down within 
reach of his hands." He sometimes twanged a tune of true 
prose on the strings of his theorbo, as where, instead of Cow- 
per''s church-going bell, he flatly says: — 

"Dong sounds the brass in the east," 

[ 239 ] 



THOREAU 

which will pass for impudence with our United Brethren. It 
is difficult to comprehend his aloofness from these affection- 
ate old symbols, drawling out from the sunshiny past, and 
without which our New England paradise is but a "howling 
wilderness"; although he loves the echo of the meeting-house 
brass. It is his species of paradoxical quintessence. He draws 
a village: "it has a meeting-house and horse-sheds, a tavern 
and a blacksmith's shop for centre, and a good deal of wood 
to cut and cord yet." 

''A man that looks on glass. 
On it may stay his eye ; 
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass. 
And the heavens espy." 

Of architecture Thoreau thought that, as he had no wines 
nor olives in his cellar, why need build arches to cover what 
he had not? Towards humanity in the lump, I think no one 
ever felt a more philanthropic quiet; he looked not to the 
Past, or the men of the Past, as having so special a value for 
him as our present doings. It was for others to do this, — to 
toddle about after the nomadic ghosts of wit and sense, — 
and, no doubt, they pass profitable lives (for them); but it 
was not Thoreau who aided or abetted them. I have tried 
often, in conversing with him, to fathom the secret of these 
and similar opinions, — having myself the due respect for all 
formality and tradition, — but he loved not argument in dis- 
course, had his own opinions (wherever they came from) and 
his company could accept them or not, — he had not time 
nor inclination to spend effort in dusting them or shaking 

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HIS WRITINGS 

them out, like carpets. But no man was a more careful and 
punctilious citizen, or more faithfully respected the callings 
and professions of his fellow-men. 

This taste for novelty and freedom, and distaste for forms 
and fetters, came practically to the surface in his violent 
hatred of American slavery. Nothing so vile in all history 
forced itself on his mind. For Garrison, Phillips, and Parker 
Pillsbury he had the proper admiration; for Captain John 
Brown, from the first he had undivided respect and esteem; 
nor had that devoted man a sincerer mourner at his death. 
We took our usual walk after the affecting funeral ceremony 
in Concord, and the cool twilight cast its reproach over that 
fearful slaughter; as on later events that followed the tragedy 
at Charlestown, fell a twilight of terror, succeeded by a res- 
urrection of peaceful and serene freedom. Thoreau ranks in 
the front of the storming-party against the old Golgotha of 
slavery. He never faltered, but from first to last lived and 
worked a faithful fi'iend to the American slave. Not one slave 
only has he housed and placed "aboard the cars" on his way 
to Canada, — Concord being on the direct route to that free 
country. 

His notions of institutions were like his views of sepulchres. 
Another has said, " It is my business to rot dead leaves," sym- 
bolizing a character working like water. "A man might well 
pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature 
by being buried in it. It is, therefore, much to the credit of 
Little John, the famous follower of Robin Hood, that his 
grave was 'long celebrous for the yielding of excellent whet- 

[ 241 ] 



THOREAU 

stones.' Nothing but great antiquity can make grave-yards 
interesting to me. I have no friends there. The farmer who 
has skimmed his farm might perchance leave his body to Na- 
ture to be ploughed in. 'And the king seide, What is the 
biriel which I se ? And the citeseynes of that cite answeride 
to him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God that cam fro 
Juda.'" 

He makes us a photograph of style, which touches some of 
his chief strength. "There is a sort of homely truth and natu- 
ralness in some books which is very rare to find, and yet looks 
cheap enough. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a 
book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next 
to beauty, and a very high art. Some have this merit only. 
Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any 
truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and 
confer no favor. They do not speak a good word for her. The 
surliness with which the wood-chopper speaks of his woods, 
handling them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the 
mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature.*" So Phi- 
lina cried, "Oh! that I might never hear more of nature and 
scenes of nature ! When the day is bright you go to walk, and 
to dance when you hear a tune played. But who would think 
a moment on the music or the weather .^^ It is the dancer that 
interests us, and not the violin; and to look upon a pair of 
bright black eyes is the life of a pair of blue ones. But what 
on earth have we to do with wells and brooks and old rotten 
lindens.?"" 

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HIS WRITINGS 

THE harper's SONGi 

"'I sing but as the linnet sings, 

Tliat on the green bough dwelleth ; 
A rich reward his music brings. 

As from his throat it swelleth : 
Yet might I ask, I 'd ask of thine 
One sparkling draught of purest wine, 

To drink it here before you.' 

He viewed the wine, he quaffed it up : 

'Oh ! draught of sweetest savor! 
Oh ! happy house, where such a cup 

Is thought a little favor ! 
If well you fare, i-emember me. 
And thank kind Heaven, from envy free. 

As now for this I thank you.'" 

Goethe, who wrote this, never signed the temperance-pledge : 
no more did Thoreau, but drank the kind of wine "which 
never grew in the belly of the grape," nor in that of the com. 
He was made more dry by drinking. These affections were a 
kind of resume^ or infant thanatopsis, sharp on both edges. 
Yet, in spite of this abundant moderation, he saj^s, "I trust 
that you realize what an exaggerator I am, — that I Itiy my- 
self out to exaggerate whenever I have an opportunity, — 
pile Pelion upon Ossa, to reach heaven so. Expect no trivial 
truth from me, unless I am on the witness stand. I will come 
as near to lying as you will drive a coach-and-four. If it is n't 
thus and so with me, it is with something."" As for ^vriting 

1 In "Wilhelm Meister." 
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THOREAU 

letters, he mounts above prose. "Methinks I will write to 
you. Methinks you will be glad to hear. We will stand on 
solid foundations to one another, — I am a column planted on 
this shore, you on that. We meet the same sun in his rising. 
We were built slowly, and have come to our bearing. We will 
not mutually fall over that we may meet, but will grandly 
and eternally guard the straits."" 

''My life is like a stroll upon the beach, — 
I have but few companions by the shore." 



''Go where he will, the wise man is at home; 
His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome ; 
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road." 

Emerson. 

This well-known speech to his large and respectable circle 
of acquaintance beyond the mountains is a pretty night-piece : 
"Greeting: My most serene and irresponsible neighbors, let 
us see that we have the whole advantage of each other. We 
will be useful, at least, if not admirable to one another. I 
know that the mountains which separate us are high, and 
covered with perpetual snow; but despair not. Improve the 
serene weather to scale them. If need be, soften the rocks 
with vinegar. For here lies the verdant plain of Italy ready 
to receive you. Nor shall I be slow on my side to penetrate to 
your Provence. Strike then boldly at head or heart, or any 
vital part. Depend upon it the timber is well seasoned and 
tough, and will bear rough usage; and if it should crack, 
there is plenty more where it came from. I am no piece of 

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HIS WRITINGS 

crockery, that cannot be jostled against my neighbor with- 
out being in danger of being broken by the colHsion, and 
must needs ring false and jarringly to the end of my days 
when once I am cracked ; but rather one of the old-fashioned 
wooden trenchers, which one while stands at the head of the 
table, and at another is a milking-stool, and at another a 
seat for children; and, finally, goes down to its grave not un- 
adorned with honorable scars, and does not die till it is worn 
out. Nothing can shock a brave man but dulness. Think how 
many rebuffs every man has experienced in his day, — per- 
haps has fallen into a horse-pond, eaten fresh-water clams, or 
worn one shirt for a week without washing. Indeed, you can- 
not receive a shock, unless you have an electric affinity for 
that which shocks you. Use me, then; for I am useful in my 
way, and stand as one of many petitioners, — from toadstool 
and henbane up to dahlia and violet, — supplicating to be 
put to any use, if by any means you may find me serviceable : 
whether for a medicated drink or bath, as balm and laven- 
der ; or for fragrance, as verbena and geranium ; or for sight, 
as cactus; or for thoughts, as pansy. These humbler, at least, 
if not those higher uses."" 
So good a writer should 

"live 
Upon the alms of his superfluous praise." 

He was choice in his words. " All these sounds,*" says he, " the 
crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects 
at noon, are the evidence of nature^s health or sound state." 

[ 245 ] 



THOREAU 

For so learned a man he spared his erudition; neither did 
he, as one who was no mean poet, use lines like these to cele- 
brate his clearness: — 

''Who dares upbraid these open rhymes of mine 
With blindfold Aquines, or darke Venusine? 
Or rough-hewn Teretisius, writ in th' antique vain 
Like an old satire^ and new Flaccian? 
Which who reads thrice, and rubs his ragged brow. 
And deep indenteth every doubtful row, 
Scoring the margent with his blazing stars. 
And hundredth crooked interlinears 
(Like to a merchant's debt-roll new defaced, 
When some crack'd Manour cross'd his book at last), 
Should all in rage the curse-beat page out-rive. 
And in each dust-heap bury me alive." 

Hall's Satires. 

There are so few obscurities in Thoreau's writing, that the 
uneasy malevolence of ephemeral critics has not discovered 
enough to cite, and his style has that ease and moderateness 
which appeal to taste. 

He had the sense of humor, and in one place indulges 
himself in some Latin fun, where he names the wild apples, 
creatures of his fancy. "There is, first of all, the wood-apple, 
Malus sylvatica; the blue-jay apple; the apple which grows 
in dells in the woods, sylvestrivallis ; also in hollows in pas- 
tures, campestrivallis ; the apple that grows in an old cellar- 
hole, Malus cellaris; the meadow-apple; the partridge-apple; 
the truants'* apple, cessatoris; the saunterer's apple, — you 
must lose yourself before you can find the way to that; the 

[ 246 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

beauty of the air, decus aeris; December-eating; the frozen- 
thawed, gelato-soluta ; the brindled apple ; wine of New Eng- 
land; the chickadee apple; the green apple, — this has many 
synonymes; in its perfect state it is the Cholera rnorh'ifera aut 
dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima; the hedge-apple. Mains 
sepium; the slug apple, I'lmacea; the apple whose fruit we 
tasted in our youth; our particular apple, not to be found 
in any catalogue, pedestrium solatium^'' and many others. 
His love of this sour vegetable is characteristic : it is the wild 
flavor, the acidity, the difficulty of eating it, which pleased. 
The lover of gravy, the justice lined with capon, apoplectic 
professors in purple skulls, who reckon water a nuisance, never 
loved his pen that praised poverty: "Quid est paupertas? 
odibile bonum, sanitatis mater, curarum remotio, absque sol- 
licitudine semita, sapientiae reparatrix, negotium sine damno, 
intractabilis substantia, possessio absque calumnia, incerta 
fortuna, sine sollicitudine felicitas." ^ 

Or in what he names complemental verses from Wither: — 

''Thou dost presume too much^ poor needy wretch. 
To claim a station in the firmament. 
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub. 
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue, 
With roots and pot-herbs. We, more high, advance 
Such virtues only as admit excess, — 
Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, 

^A free rendition: "What is poverty? Kerosene lamps, taking tea out, 
Dalley's pain-ldller, horse-cars, scolding help, bookseller's accounts, mod- 
ern rubber boots, what nobody discounts, the next tax-bill, sitting in 
your minister's pew." (The original is in Secundus. f. b. s.) 

[ 247 ] 



THOREAU 

All-seeing prudence, magnanimity 
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue 
For which antiquity hath left no name, 
But patterns only, such as Hercules, 
Achilles, Theseus; — back to thy loath'd cell !" 

He neglected no culture, left nothing undone that could 
aid him in his works; and a paragraph he left for guidance 
in such pursuits may be cited: "Whatever wit has been 
produced on the spur of the moment will bear to be recon- 
sidered and re-formed with phlegm. The arrow had best not 
be loosely shot. The most transient and passing remark must 
be reconsidered by the writer, made sure and warranted, as if 
the earth had rested on its axle to back it, and all the natu- 
ral forces lay behind it. The writer must direct his sentences 
as carefully and leisurely as the marksman his rifle, — who 
shoots sitting, and with a rest, with patent sights, and conical 
balls beside. If you foresee that a part of your essay will 
topple down after the lapse of time, throw it down yourself." 
This advice may be pressed on all writers, and this on all 
livers: "I cannot stay to be congratulated; I would leave 
the world behind me." No labor was too great, no expense 
too costly, if only laid out in the right direction; and the 
series of extracts he has left on the history of the Indians is 
a proof of this. These books, forming a little library of them- 
selves, consist of such extracts from all the writers on the 
Indians, all the world over, as would have value and advan- 
tage for him. He read the long and painful series of Jesuit 
Relations, by the Canadian originals, — the early works in 

[ 248 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

American history at Harvard College; collected, compared, 
and copied the early maps, early figures of the Indians (such 
as those of De Bry) ; read all travels which he could procure, 
and carefully excerpted all facts bearing on the subject of 
Indians, yet this vast labor and expense and toil, — far more 
than most literary men willingly undergo in their lives, — 
were but the pursuit of a collateral topic. 

He had that pleasant art of convertibility, by which he 
could render the homely strains of Nature into homely verse 
and prose, holding yet the flavor of their immortal origins; 
while meagre and barren writers upon science do perhaps in- 
tend to describe that quick being of which they prose, yet 
never loose a word of happiness or humor. The art of de- 
scribing realities, and imparting to them a touch of human 
nature, is something comfortable. A few bits of such natural 
history as this follow: — 

{October, 1861.) "A hornets''-nest I discovered in a rather 
tall huckleberry-bush, the stem projecting through it, the 
leaves spreading over it. How these fellows avail themselves 
of these vegetables! They kept arriving, the great fellows 
(with white abdomens), but I never saw whence they came, 
but only heard the buzz just at the entrance. At length, after 
I had stood before the nest for five minutes, during which 
time they had taken no notice of me, two seemed to be con- 
sulting at the entrance, and then made a threatening dash at 
me, and returned to the nest. I took the hint and retired. 
They spoke as plainly as man could have done. I examined 
this nest again: I found no hornets buzzing about; the en- 

[ 249 ] 



THOREAU 

trance seemed to have been enlarged, so I concluded it had 
been deserted, but looking nearer I discovered two or three 
dead hornets, men-of-war, in the entry- way. Cutting off the 
bushes which sustained it, I proceeded to open it with my 
knife. It was an inverted cone, eight or nine inches by seven 
or eight. First, there were half a dozen layers of waved, 
brownish paper resting loosely over one another, occupying 
nearly an inch in thickness, for a covering. Within were the 
six-sided cells, in three stories, suspended from the roof and 
from one another by one or two suspension -rods only; the 
lower story much smaller than the rest. And in what may 
be called the attic or garret of the structure were two live 
hornets partially benumbed with cold. It was like a deserted 
castle of the Mohawks, a few dead ones at the entrance to 
the fortress." 

"The prinos berries (Prinos verficillatus) are quite red; the 
dogwood has lost every leaf, its bunches of dry, greenish 
berries hanging straight down from the bare stout twigs, 
as if their peduncles were broken. It has assumed its winter 
aspect, — a Mithridatic look. The black birch {Betula lento) is 
straw-colored, the witch-hazel {Hamamelis Virginicd) is now 
in bloom. I perceive the fragrance of ripe grapes in the air. 
The little conical burrs of the agrimony stick to my clothes; 
the pale lobelia still blooms freshly, and the rough hawk- 
weed holds up its globes of yellowish fuzzy seeds, as well as 
the panicled. The declining sun falling on the willows and on 
the water produces a rare, soft light I do not often see, — a 
greenish-y el low." 

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HIS WRITINGS 

''Thus^ perchance^ the Indian hunter. 
Many a lagging year agone. 
Gliding o'er thy rippling waters. 
Lowly hummed a natural song. 

**Now the sun 's behind the willows. 
Now he gleams along the waves. 
Faintly o'er the wearied billows 
Come the spirits of the braves. 

"The reach of the river between Bedford and Carlisle, seen 
from a distance, has a strangely ethereal, celestial, or elysian 
look. It is of a light sky-blue, alternating with smoother 
white streaks, where the surface reflects the light differently, 
like a milk-pan full of the milk of Valhalla partially skimmed, 
more gloriously and heavenly fair and pure than the sky 
itself. We have names for the rivers of hell, but none for the 
rivers of heaven, unless the Milky Way may be one. It is such 
a smooth and shining blue, like a panoply of sky-blue plates, — 
'^'Sug'ring all dangers with success.' 

"Fairhaven Pond, seen from the Cliffs in the moonlight, is 
a sheeny lake of apparently a boundless primitive forest, un- 
trodden by man; the windy surf sounding freshly and wildly 
in the single pine behind you, the silence of hushed wolves in 
the wilderness, and, as you fancy, moose looking off from the 
shores of the lake ; the stars of poetry and history and unex- 
plored nature looking down on the scene. This light and this 
hour take the civilization all out of the landscape. Even at 
this time in the evening (8 p.m.) the crickets chirp and the 
small birds peep, the wind roars in the wood, as if it were 

[ 251 ] 



THOREAU 

just before dawn. The landscape is flattened into mere light 
and shade, from the least elevation. A field of ripening corn, 
now at night, that has been topped, with the stalks stacked 
up, has an inexpressibly dry, sweet, rich ripening scent : I feel 
as I were an ear of ripening corn myself. Is not the whole air 
a compound of such odors indistinguishable.? Drying corn- 
stalks in a field, what an herb garden ! What if one moon has 
come and gone with its world of poetry, so divine a creature 
freighted with its hints for me, and I not use them!" 

He loved the TroXv^Xotcr^ov daXdcrcrrjv, the noisy sea, and has 
left a pleasant sketch of his walks along the beach; but he 
never attempted the ocean passage. The shore at Truro, on 
Cape Cod, which he at one time frequented, has been thus in 
part described,^ 

A little Hamlet hid away from men. 

Spoil for no painter's eye^ no poet's pen^ 

Modest as some brief flower, concealed, obscure. 

It nestles on the high and echoing shore ; 

Yet here I found I was a welcome guest. 

At generous Nature's hospitable feast. 

The barren moors no fences girdled high. 

The endless beaches planting could defy. 

And the blue sea admitted all the air, 

A cordial draught, so sparkling and so rare. 

The aged widow in her cottage lone, 
Of solitude and musing patient grown. 
Could let me wander o'er her scanty fields. 
And pick the flower that contemplation yields. 

1 By Channing, — the whole is in "Poems of Sixty-five Years." 
[ 252 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

This vision past, and all the rest was mine, — 

The gliding vessel on the ocean's line, 

That left the world wherein my senses strayed. 

Yet long enough her soft good-by delayed 

To let my eye engross her beauty rare, 

Kissed by the seas, an infant of the air. 

Thou, too, wert mine, the green and curling wave. 

Child of the sand, a playful child and brave ; 

Urged on the gale, the crashing surges fall ; 

The zephyr breathes, how softly dances all ! 

Dread ocean-wave ! some eyes look out o'er thee 
And fill with tears, and ask. Could such things be? 
Why slept the All-seeing Heart when death was near? 
Be hushed each doubt, assuage thy throbbing fear ! 
Think One who made the sea and made the wind 
Might also feel for our lost human kind ; 
And they who sleep amid the surges tall 
Summoned great Nature to their funeral. 
And she obeyed. We fall not far from shore ; 
The sea-bird's wail, the surf, our loss deplore; 
The melancholy main goes sounding on 
His world-old anthem o'er our horizon. 

As Turner was in the habit of adding what he thought ex- 
planatory verses to his landscapes, so it may be said of some 
books, besides the special subject treated they are diversified 
with quotations. Thoreau adhered closely to his topic, yet in 
his "Week"*' as many as a hundred authors are quoted, and 
there are more than three hundred passages either cited or 
touched upon. In fact, there are some works that have rather 
a peculiar value for literary gentry, like Pliny, Montaigne, 

[ 253 ] 



THOREAU 

and Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," upon which last 
work Lord Byron thought many authors had constructed a 
reputation. 

Thoreau''s style is one of the best English styles that I am 
acquainted with; not tumultuous or exaggerated, nor dry and 
pointed, it has the mellowness of the older English, — some- 
times almost its quaintness, — but usually expresses admirably 
the intent of his mind. It was no small practice which fulfilled 
his motto, — "Improve every opportunity to express yourself 
in writing as if it were your last." His facility was truly mar- 
vellous; he seemed made for holding a pen between his fingers 
and getting excellent sentences, where other writers hobble 
and correct. Yet he used the file very often, — nowhere more, 
I fancy, than in some of his "Maine Woods'" papers, which 
indeed were not easy to write. Think of the fertility of such 
a mind — not wielding the pen for taskwork, but pleasure — 
pouring forth this admirable portrait-painting of fish, bird, 
or insect, the season or the hour of the day; never wearied, 
never worn, but always exhilarate and full of cheer. Few ob- 
jects impressed him more than the form of birds, and his few 
felicitous touches are well worth citing. He speaks of "a gull 
pure white, a wave of foam in the air, — all wing, like a birch- 
scale." He mistook two white ducks for "the foaming crest 
of a wave" and sees a small duck that is "all neck and wings, 
— a winged roll-pin." Snow-buntings he calls "winged snow- 
balls." The flight of the peetweet reminds him of an impression 
we all have had, — but who has described it.? "Their wings ap- 
pear double as they fly by you." 

[ 254 ] 



HIS WRITINGS 

A list follows of the writings of Thoreau, as they appeared 
chronologically. These have been since printed in separate vol- 
umes, if they did not so appear at first (with few exceptions), 
under the titles of "Excursions, 1863," "The Maine Woods, 
1864," "A Yankee in Canada, 1866," "Cape Cod, 1865," and 
in addition a volume of letters, 1865.^ 

A Walk to Wachusett. — In the '^Boston Miscellany." 

In the Dial. — 1840-1 844: — 

Vol. I. — Sympathy. Aulus Persius Flaccus. Nature doth have her 

dawn each day. 
Vol. II. — Sic Vita. Friendship. 

Vol. III. — Natural History of Massachusetts. In "Prayers," the pas- 
sage beginning "Great God." The Black Knight. The Inward 
Morning. Free Love. The Poet's Delay. Rumors from an ^olian 
Harp. The Moon. To the Maiden in the East. Tlie Summer Rain. 
Tlie Laws of Menu. Prometheus Bound. Anacreon. To a Stray 
Fowl. Orphics. Dark Ages. 
Vol. IV. — A Winter Walk. Homer, Ossian, Chaucer. Pindar. Frag- 
ments of Pindar. Herald of Freedom. 

In the Democratic Review, 1843. — Tlie Landlord. Paradise (to be) 
Regained. 

In Graham's Magazine, 1847. — Thomas Carlyle and his Works. 

In the Union Magazine. — Ktaadn and the Maine Woods. 

In iEsTHETic Papers. — Resistance to Civil Government. 

A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers. Boston : James Mon- 
roe and Company, 1849. 

In Putnam's Magazine. — Excursion to Canada (in part). Cape Cod (in 
part). 

Walden. Boston : Ticknor and Company, 1854. 

1 Since then (1894) the letters have been reprinted with many additions, and 
there are now a dozen volumes of Thoreau s works. 

[ 255 ] 



THOREAU 

In the Liberator. — Speech at Framingham^ July 4, 1854. Reminis- 
cences of John Brown (read at North Elba, July 4, 1860). 

In "Echoes from Harper's Ferry." — 1860. Lecture on John Brown, 
and Remarks at Concord on the day of his execution. 

In the Atlantic Monthly, 1859. — Chesuncook, 1862. Walking. Au- 
tumnal Tints. Wild Apples. 

In the New York Tribune. — The Succession of Forest Trees (also 
printed in the Middlesex Agricultural Transactions). 1860. 

"Nil mihi rescribas, attamen ipse veni." 



[ 256 ] 



PERSONALITIES 



"If great men wrong me, I will spare myself; 
If mean, I will spare them." 

Donne. 

"As soon as generals are dismembered and distributed into parts, they 
become so much attenuated as in a manner to disappear ; wherefore the 
terms by which they are expressed undergo the same attenuation, and 
seem to vanish and fail." 

SWEDENBORG. 

"The art of overturning states is to discredit established customs, by 
looking into their origin, and pointing out that it was defective in author- 
ity and justice." 

Pascal. 

"Adspice murorum moles, praeruptaque saxa, 
Obrutaque horrenti vasta theatra situ, 
Haec sunt Roma. Viden' velut ipsa cadavera tantae 
Urbis adhuc spirent imperiosa minas." 

Janus Vitalis, 



CHAPTER XIII 

PERSONALITIES 

Our author"'s life can be divided in three parts: first, to the 
year 1837, when he left college; next, to the publishing of his 
"Week," in 1849 (ten years after his first excursion up the 
Merrimac River, of which that work treats); and the remain- 
der of his doings makes the third. It was after he had gradu- 
ated that he began to embalm his thoughts in a diary, and 
not till many years' practice did they assume a systematic 
shape. This same year (1837) brought him into relation with 
a literary man (Emerson), by which his mind may have been 
first soberly impregnated with that love of letters that after 
accompanied him, but of whom he was no servile copyist. He 
had so wisely been nourished at the collegiate fount as to 
come forth undissipated; not digging his grave in tobacco 
and coffee, — those two perfect causes of paralysis. "I have a 
faint recollection of pleasure derived from smoking dried lily- 
stems before I was a man. I have never smoked anything 
more noxious."" His school-keeping was a nominal occupancy 
of his time for a couple of years ; and he soon began to serve 
the mistress to whom he was afterward bound, and to sing 
the immunity of Pan. Some long-anticipated excursion set the 
date upon the year, and furnished its materials for the jour- 
nal. And at length, in 1842, he printed in a fabulous quar- 
terly, "The Dial," a paper; and again, in 1843, came out 
"The Walk to Wachusett," a bracing revival of exhilarat- 

[ 259 ] 



THOREAU 

ing thoughts caught from the mountain atmosphere. In the 
"Dial" came the poems before commented upon; it afforded 
him sufficient space to record his pious hopes and sing the 
glories of the world he habitually admired. With the actual 
publication of the "Week," at his own expense, and which 
cost him his labor for several years to defray, begins a new 
era, — he is introduced to a larger circle and launches forth 
his paper nautilus, well pleased to eye its thin and many- 
colored ribs shining in the watery sunshine. His early friends 
and readers never failed, and others increased; thus was he 
rising in literary fame, — 

''That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along." 

Then came the log-book of his woodland cruise at Walden, 
his critical articles upon Thomas Carlyle and others; and he 
began to appear as a lecturer, with a theory, as near as he 
could have one. He was not to try to suit his audience, but 
consult the prompting of his genius and suit himself. If a de- 
mand was made for a lecture, he would gratify it so far as in 
him lay, but he could not descend from the poetry of insight 
to the incubation of prose. Lecture committees at times failed 
to see the prophetic god, and also the statute-putty. " Walden " 
increased his repute as a writer, if some great men thought 
him bean-dieted, with an owl for his minister, and who milked 
creation, not the cow. It is in vain for the angels to contend 
against stupidity. 

He began to take more part in affairs (the Anti-slavery 
crisis coming to the boil) in 1857. Captain John Brown, after 

[ 260 J 



PERSONALITIES 

of Harper's Ferry, was in Concord that year, and had talk 
with Thoreau, who knew nothing of his revolutionary plans. 
He shot off plenty of coruscating abolition rockets at Fra- 
mingham and elsewhere, and took his chance in preaching at 
those animated free-churches which pushed from the rotting 
compost of the Southern hot-bed. At Worcester he is said to 
have read a damaging-institution lecture upon " Beans," that 
has never got to print. He carried more guns than they, at 
those irritable reform meetings, which served as a discharge- 
pipe for the virus of all the regular scolds; for he did not 
spatter by the job. At the time of Sims's rendition he offered 
to his townsmen that the revolutionary monument should be 
thickly coated with black paint as a symbol of that dismal 
treason. He, too, had the glory of speaking the first public 
good word for Captain John Brown, after his attack upon 
the beast run for the American plate, — that Moloch entered 
by Jeff. Davis and backers. In three years more the United 
States, that killed instead of protecting bold Osawatomie, 
was enlisting North Carolina slaves to fight against Virginia 
slaveholders. 

It must be considered the superior and divine event of his 
human experience when that famed hero of liberty forced 
the serpent of slavery from its death-grasp on the American 
Constitution. John Brown "expected to endure hardness"; 
and this was the expectation and fruition of Thoreau, natu- 
rally and by his culture. His was a more soiu: and saturnine 
hatred of injustice, his life was more passive, and he lost the 
glory of action which fell to the lot of Brown. He had naught 

[ 261 ] 



THOREAU 

in his thoughts of which a plot could spin; neither did he 
believe in civil government, or that form of police against the 
Catiline or Cassar, who has ready a coup (Tetat, such as the 
speckled Napoleonic egg^ now addled, that was laid in Paris. 
Thoreau worshipped a hero in a mortal disguise, under the 
shape of that homely son of justice: his pulses thrilled and 
his hands involuntarily clenched together at the mention of 
Captain Brown, at whose funeral in Concord he said a few 
words, and prepared a version of Tacitus upon Agricola, some 
lines of which are : — 

"You, Agricola, are fortunate, not only because your life 
was glorious, but because your death was timely. As they tell 
us who heard your last words, unchanged and willing you ac- 
cepted your fate. . . . Let us honor you by our admiration, 
rather than by short-lived praises; and, if Nature aid us, by 
our emulation of you."" He had before said : " When I now 
look over my common-place book of poetry, I find that the 
best of it is oftenest applicable, in part or wholly, to the case 
of Captain Brown. The sense of grand poetry, read by the 
light of this event, is brought out distinctly like an invisible 
writing held to the fire. As Marvell wrote: — 

"'WlciQn the sword glitters o'er the judge's head. 
And fear has coward churchmen silenced. 
Then is the poet's time ; 't is then he draws. 
And single fights forsaken virtue's cause : 
Sings still of ancient rights and better times. 
Seeks suffering good, arraigns successful crimes.' 

"And George Chapman: — 

[ 262 ] 



PERSONALITIES 

*' 'There is no danger to a man who knows 
^^Tiat life and death is ; there 's not any law 
Exceeds his knowledge.' 

"And Wotton: — 

'''Who hath his life from rumors freed. 
Of hope to rise or fear to fall ; 
Lord of himself, though not of lands, 
And having nothing, yet hath all.'" 

The foundation of his well-chosen attainment in Modern 
and Classic authors dates from the origin of his literary life. 
In college he studied only what was best, and made it the 
rule. He could say to young students: ^'^ Begin xoith the best! 
start with what is so ; never deviate." That part of American 
history he studied was pre-pilgrim : the Jesuit Relations, early 
New England authors. Wood, Smith, or Josselyn, afforded 
him cordial entertainment. Henry's Travels, Lewis and Clark, 
and such books, he knew remarkably well, and thought no 
one had written better accounts of things or made them more 
living than Goethe in his letters from Italy. 

Alpine and sea-side plants he admired, besides those of his 
own village : of the latter, he mostly attended willows, golden- 
rods, asters, polygonums, sedges, and grasses; fungi and li- 
chens he somewhat affected. He was accustomed to date the 
day of the month by the appearance of certain flowers, and 
thus visited special plants for a series of years, in order to form 
an average; as his white-thorn by TarbelPs Spring, "good for 
to-morrow, if not for to-day." The bigness of noted trees, the 
number of their rings, the degree of branching by which their 

[ 263 ] 



THOREAU 

age may be drawn; the larger foiests, such as that princely 
"Inches Oak-wood"" in West Acton, or Wetherbee's patch, he 
paid attentions to. Here he made his cards, and left more 
than a pack; his friends were surely disengaged, unless they 
had been cut off. He could sink down in the specific history 
of a woodland by learning what trees now occupied the soil. In 
some seasons he bored a variety of forest trees, when the sap 
was amiable, and made his black-birch and other light wines. 
He tucked plants away in his soft hat in place of a botany- 
box. His study (a place in the garret) held its dry miscellany 
of botanical specimens; its corner of canes, its cases of eggs 
and lichens, and a weight of Indian arrow-heads and hatchets, 
besides a store of nuts, of which he was as fond as squirrels. 
"Man comes out of his winter quarters in March as lean as a 
woodchuck,*" he said. 

In the varieties of tracks he was a philologist; he read that 
primeval language, and studied the snow for them, as well as 
for its wonderful blue and pink colors, and its floccular deposits 
as it melts. He saw that hunter's track who always steps hefore 
you come. Ice in all its lines and polish he peculiarly admired. 
From Billerica Falls to Saxonville ox-bow, thirty miles or more, 
he sounded the deeps and shallows of the Concord River, and 
put down in his tablets that he had such a feeling. Gossamer 
was a shifting problem, beautifully vague. Street says: — 

''A ceaseless glimmering, near the ground, betrays 
The gossamer, its tiny thread is waving past. 
Borne on the wind's faint breath, and to yon branch, 
Tangled and trembling, clings like snowy silk." 
[ 264 ] 



PERSONALITIES 

Insects were fascinating, from the first gray little moth, 
the perla, born in February's deceitful glare, and the "fuzzy 
gnats" that people the gay sunbeams, to the last luxuriat- 
ing Vanessa antiope, that gorgeous purple-velvet butterfly 
somewhat wrecked amid November's champaign breakers. He 
sought for and had honey-bees in the close spathe of the 
marsh-cabbage, when the eye could detect no opening of the 
same; water-bugs, skaters, carrion beetles, devirs-needles ("the 
French call them demoiselles^ the artist loves to paint them, 
and paint must be cheap""); the sap-green, glittering, irides- 
cent cicindelas, those lively darlings of Newbury sandbanks 
and Professor Peck,^ he lingered over as heaven's never-to- 
be repainted Golconda. Hornets, wasps, bees, and spiders, 
and their several nests, he carefully attended. The worms and 
caterpillars, washed in the spring-freshets from the meadow- 
grass, filled his soul with hope at the profuse vermicular ex- 
pansion of Nature. The somersaults of the caracoling stream 
were his vital pursuit, which, slow as it appears, now and then 
jumps up three feet in the sacred ash-barrel of the peaceful 
cellar. Hawks, ducks, sparrows, thrushes, and migrating war- 
blers, in all their variety, he carefully perused with his field- 
glass, — an instrument purchased with toilsome discretion, 
and carried in its own strong case and pocket. Thoreau named 
all the birds without a gun, a weapon he never used in ma- 
ture years. He neither killed nor imprisoned any animal, unless 
driven by acute needs. He brought home a flying squirrel, to 
study its mode of flight, but quickly carried it back to the wood. 
1 An entomologist of seventy years ago, who " collected " near Curzon's Mill. 

[ 9.Q5 ] 



THOREAU 

He possessed true instincts of topography, and could con- 
ceal choice things in the brush and find them again; unlike 
Gall, who commonly lost his locality and himself, as he tells 
us, when in the wood, master as he was in playing on the 
organ. If he needed a box on his walk, he would strip a piece 
of birch-bark off the tree, fold it when cut straightly to- 
gether, and put his tender lichen or brittle creature therein. 
In those irritable thunderclaps which come, he says, "with 
tender, graceful violence," he sometimes erected a transitory 
house by means of his pocket-knife; where he sat, pleased with 
"the minute drops from off the eaves,*" not questioning the 
love of electricity for trees. If out on the river, haul up your 
boat, turn it upside-down, and yourself under it. Once he 
was thus doubled up, when Jove let drop a pattern thunder- 
bolt in the river in front of his boat, while he whistled a 
lively air as accompaniment. This is noted, as he was much 
distressed by storms when young, and used to go whining to 
his father''s room, and say, "I don't feel well,"" and then take 
shelter in the paternal arms, where his health improved. 

''His little son into his bosom creeps. 
The lively image of his father's face." 

While walking in the woods, he delighted to give the fall- 
ing leaves as much noise and rustle as he could, all the while 
singing some cheerful stave; thus celebrating the pedestrian's 
service to Pan as well as to the nymphs and dryads, who never 
live in a dumb asylum. 

[ ^66 ] 



PERSONALITIES 

**The squirrel chatters merrily. 
The nut falls ripe and brown, 
And, gem-like, from the jewelled tree 

The leaf comes fluttering down ; 
And, restless in his plumage gay. 
From bush to bush loud screams the jay." 

Street. 

Nothing pleased him better than our native vintage days, 
when the border of our meadows becomes a rich plantation, 
whose gathering has been thus described: — 

WILD GRAPESi 

''Bring me some grapes," she cried, ''some clusters bring, 
Herbert! with large flat leaves, the purple founts." 
Then answering he, — " Ellen, if in the days 
When on the river's bank hang ripely o'er 
The tempting bunches red, and fragrance fills 
The clear September air, if then" — "Ah ! then," 
Broke in the girl, — "then" — 

September coming, 
Herbert, the day of all those sun-spoiled days 
Quite petted by him most, wishing to choose. 
Alone set off" for the familiar bank 
Of the blue river, nor to Ellen spake ; 
That thing of moods long since forgetting all 
Request or promise floating o'er the year. 
On his right arm a white ash basket swung. 
Its depth a promise of its coming stores ; 
While the fair boy, o'ertaking in his thought 

1 By Channing. 

[ 267 ] 



THOREAU 

Those tinted bubbles, the best lover's game, 
Sped joyous on tlirough the clear mellowing day. 
At length he passed Fairhaven's cliff, whose front 
Shuts in a curve of shore, and soon he sees 
The harvest-laden vine. 

Large hopes were his, 
And with a bounding step he leaped along 
O'er the close cranberry-beds, his trusty foot 
Oft lighting on the high elastic tufts 
Of the promiscuous sedge. Alas, for hope! 
For some deliberate hand those vines had picked 
By most subtracting rule! yet on the youth 
More eager sprang, dreaming of prizes rare. 
To the blue river's floor fell the green marsh. 
And a white mountain cloud-range slowly touched 
The infinite zenith of September's heaven. 
"I have you now!" cried Herbert, tearing through 
The envious thorny thicket to the vines, 
Crushing the alder sticks, where rustling leaves 
Conceal the rolling stones and wild-rose stems, 
And always in the cynic cat-briar pricked. 
''I have you now !" 

And rarely on the scope 
Of bold adventurer, British or Spaniard, 
Loomed Indian coasts, till then a poet's dream, 
More glad to them than this Etruscan vase 
On his rash eyes, reward of hope deferred. 
There swum before him in the magic veil 
Of that soft shimmering autumn afternoon. 
On the black speckled alders, on the ground. 
On leaf and pebble flat or round, the light 
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PERSONALITIES 

Of purple grapes, purple or faintly bloomed, 

And a few saintly bunches Muscat-white ! 

Nor Herbert paused, nor looked at half his wealth, 

As in his wild delight he grasped a bunch. 

And till his fingers burst still grasped a bunch. 

Heaping the great ash basket till its cave 

No further globe could hold. And then he stopped. 

And from a shrivelled stub picked oil' three grapes, 

Tliose which he ate. 

'T is right he wreathe about 
This heaped and purple spoil that he has robbed 
Those fresh unfrosted leaves, green in the shade. 
And then he weighs upon his hand the prize. 
And springs, — the Atlas on his nervous arm. 
Now buried 'neath the basket Herbert sunk, 
Or seemed, and showers of drops tickled his cheeks, 
Yet with inhuman nerve he struggles on. 
At times the boy, half fainting in his march. 
Saw twirl in coils the river at his feet, 
Reflecting madly the still woods and hills. 
The quiet cattle painted on the pool 
In far-off pastures, and the musing clouds 
That scarcely sailed, or seemed to sail, at all. 
Till the strong shadows soothed the ruby trees 
To one autumnal black, how hot the toil, — 
With glowing cheeks coursed by the exacted tide, 
Aching, yet eager, resolute to win. 
Nor leave a berry though his shoulder snap. 

Within the well-known door his tribute placed, 

A fragrance of Italian vineyards leagued 

The dear New English farmhouse with sweet shores 

[ 269 ] 



THOREAU 

In spicy archipelagoes of gold, 

Where the sun cannot set, hut fades to moonlight, 

And tall maids support amphoras yn their hrows. 

And Ellen ran, all Hebe, down the stair 

Almost at one long step, while the youth still stood, 

And wonder-stricken how he reached that door. 

She cried, "Dear nu)ther, fly aiul see this world of grapes." 

Then Herbert puffed two seconds, and went in. 

Much fresh enjoyment 'J'horeau would have felt in the 
observing wisdom of that admirably endowed flower-writer, 
Annie S. Downs,^ a child of Concord (the naturalist"'s heaven), 
full of useful knowledge, and with an out-of-doors heart like 
his; a constant friend to flowers, ferns, and mosses, with an 
aft'ectionate sympathy, and a taste line and unerring, reflected 
by the excjuisite beings she justly celebrates. Must she not 
possess a portion t)f the snowdrop's pro])hecy herself as to her 
writings and this workKs winter .f* when she says: — 

"The tender Snowdrop, erect and brave, 

Gayly sprang from her snow-strewn bed. 
She doubted not there was sunshine warm 

To welcome her shrinking head; 
The graceful curves of lier slender stem, 

The sheen of her i)etals white, 
As looking across the bank of snow 

She shone like a gleam of light." 

Annie Downs and Alfred B. Street were native American 
writers in the original packages, not extended by the critics, 

1 She died in 1901, a few months earlier than Clianning. 

[ i270 ] 



PERSONALITIES 

— writers, under tlic providence of (iod, to be a blessing to 
those who love His works, hke Thoreaii! 

Thoreairs view of a future world and its rewards and pun- 
ishments was peculiar to himself, and was seldom very clearly 
expressed; yet he did not bite at a clergyman's skilfully baited 
hook of innnortality, of which, he said, could be no doubt, 
lie spoke of the reserved meaning in the insect metamor- 
phosis of the moth, painted like the summer sunrise, that 
makes its escape from a loathsome worm, and cheats the win- 
try shroud, its chrysalis. One sweet hour of spring, gazing 
into a grassy-bottomed pool, where the insect youth were 
disporting, the ^-/jriiKr (boat Hies) darting, and tadpoles be- 
giiming, like magazine writers, to drop their tails, he said: 
"Ves, I feel positive beyond a doubt, I must pass through nil 
these conditions, one day and another; I must go the whole 
round of life, and come full circle." 

If he had reason to borrow an axe or plane, his habit was 
to return it more sharply. In a walk, his companion, a citi- 
zen, said, "I do not see where you find your Indian arrow- 
heads.''"' Stooping to the ground, Henry picked one up, and 
presented it to him, crying, "Here is one." After reading and 
dreaming, on the Triu'o shore, about the deeds of Captain 
Kidd and wi-ecks of old pirate ships, he walked out after din- 
nei- on the beach, and found a five-franc piece of old France, 
saying, "I thought it was a button, it was so black; but it is 
coh-monnf (the name given there to stolen treasure). He said 
of eai'ly New English writers, like old Josselyn, "They give 
you one piece of nature, at any rate, and that is themselves, 

[ 271 ] 



THOREAU 

smacking their lips like a coach-whip,^ none of those emas- 
culated modern histories, such as Prescotfs, cursed with a 
style." 

"^As dead low earth eclipses and controls 
The quick high moon, so doth the body souls." 

His titles, if given by himself, are descriptive enough. His 
" Week," with its chapters of days, is agglutinative, and chains 
the whole agreeably in one, — 

''Much like the corals which thy wrist enfold. 
Laced up together in congruity." 

"Autumnal Tints" and "Wild Apples'" are fair country 
invitations to a hospitable house: the platter adapts itself to 
its red-cheeked shining fruit. In his volume called (without 
his sensitiveness) "Excursions," the contents look like essays, 
but are really descriptions drawn from his journals. Thoreau, 
unlike some of his neighbors, could not mosaic an essay; but 
he loved to tell a good story. He lacked the starch and buck- 
ram that vamps the Addison and Johnson mimes. His letters 
— of which most have now been printed — are abominably 
didactic, fitted to deepen the heroic drain. He wasted none 
of those precious jewels, his moments, upon epistles to Rosa 
Matilda invalids, some of whom, like leeches, fastened upon 
his horny cuticle, but did not draw. Of this gilt vermoulu, 
the sugar-gingerbread of Sympathy, Hawthorne had as much. 
There was a blank simper, an insufficient sort of affliction, at 
your petted sorrow, in the story-teller, — more consoling than 
the boiled maccaroni of pathos. Hawthorne — swallowed up 

[ 272 ] 



PERSONALITIES 

in the wretchedness of life, in that sardonic puritan element 
that drips from the elms of his birthplace — thought it inex- 
pressibly ridiculous that any one should notice man's miseries, 
these being his staple product. Thoreau looked upon it as 
equally nonsense, because men had no miseries at all except 
those of indigestion and laziness, manufactured to their own 
order. The writer of fiction could not read the naturalist, 
probably; and Thoreau had no more love or sympathy for 
fiction in books than in character. "Robinson Crusoe" and 
" Sandford and Merton," it is to be feared, were lost on him, 
such was his abhorrence of lies. Yet in the stoical ^ond of 
their characters they were alike; and it is believed that Haw- 
thorne truly admired Thoreau. A vein of humor had they 
both; and when they laughed, like Shelley, the operation 
was sufficient to split a pitcher. Hawthorne could have said: 
"People live as long in Pepper Alley as on Salisbury Plain; 
and they live so much happier that an inhabitant of the first 
would, if he turned cottager, starve his understanding for 
want of conversation, and perish in a state of mental infe- 
riority." Henry would never believe it. 

As the important consequence from his graduation at Har- 
vard, he urged upon that fading luminary, Jared Sparks, the 
need he had of books in the library; and by badgering got 
them out. His persistence became traditional. His incarcera- 
tion for one night in Concord jail, because he refused the 
payment of his poll-tax, is described in his tract, "Civil Dis- 
obedience," in the volume, "A Yankee in Canada." In this is 
his signing-off: "I, H.D.T., have signed off, and do not hold 

[ 273 ] 



THOREAU 

myself responsible to your multifarious, uncivil chaos, named 
Civil Government." He seldom went to or voted at a town 
meeting, — the instrument for operating upon a New Eng- 
land village, — nor to "meeting" or church; nor often did 
things he could not understand. In these respects Hawthorne 
mimicked him. The Concord novelist was a handsome, bulky 
character, with a soft rolling gait. A wit^ said he seemed like 
a boned pirate. Shy and awkward, he dreaded the stranger in 
his gates; while, as customs-inspector, he was employed to 
swear the oaths versus English colliers. When surveyor, find- 
ing the rum sent to the African coast was watered, he vowed 
he would not ship another gill if it was anything but pure 
proof spirit. Such was his justice to the oppressed. One of 
the things he most dreaded was to be looked at after he was 
dead. Being at a friend's demise,^ of whose extinction he had 
the care, he enjoyed — as if it had been a scene in some old 
Spanish novel — his success in keeping the waiters from steal- 
ing the costly wines sent in for the sick. Careless of heat and 
cold indoors, he lived in an JEolian-harp house, that could 
not be warmed : that he entered it by a trap-door from a rope- 
ladder is false. Lovely, amiable, and charming, his absent- 
mindedness passed for unsocial when he was hatching a new 
tragedy. As a writer, he loved the morbid and the lame. The 
"Gentle Boy" and "Scarlet Letter" eloped with the girls' 
boarding-schools. His reputation is master of his literary 
taste. His characters are not drawn from life; his plots and 
thoughts are often dreary, as he was himself in some lights. 
1 T. G. Appleton. 2 w. D. Ticknor, in Philadelphia. 
[ 274 J 



PERSONALITIES 

His favorite writers were "the English novelists," Boccaccio, 
Horace, and Johnson. 

A few lines have been given from some of Thoreau"'s ac- 
cepted authors: he loved Homer for his nature; Virgil for his 
finish; Chaucer for his health; the Robin Hood Ballads for 
their out-door blooming life; Ossian for his grandeur; Persius 
for his crabbed philosophy; Milton for his neatness and swing. 
He never loved, nor did, anything but what was good, yet he 
sometimes got no bargain in buying books, as in "Wrighfs 
Provincial Dictionary "; but he prized " Loudon's Arboretum," 
of which, after thinking of its purchase and saving up the 
money for years, he became master. It was an affair with him 
to dispense his hardly earned pistareen. He lacked the sus- 
picious generosity, the disguise of egoism : on him peeling or 
appealing was wasted; he was as close to his aim as the bark 
on a tree. "Virtue is its own reward," "A fool and his money 
are soon parted." His property was packed like seeds in a 
sunflower. There was not much of it, but that remained. He 
had not the "mirage of sympathies," such as GortchakofF de- 
scribes as wasted upon bare Poles. He squeezed the sandbanks 
of the Marlboro' road with the soles of his feet to obtain 
relief for his head, but did not throw away upon unskilled 
idleness his wage of living. No one was freer of his means in 
what he thought a good cause. "His principal and primary 
business was to be a poet : he was a natural man without de- 
sign, who spoke what he thought, and just as he thought it." 
Antiquities, Montfaucon, or Grose, trifles instead of value, 
dead men's shoes or fancies, he laid not up. At Walden he 

[ 275 ] 



THOREAU 

flung out of the window his only ornament, — a paper weight, 
— because it needed dusting. At a city eating-house his usual 
order was "boiled apple"" (a manual of alum with shortening), 
seduced by its title. He could spoil an hour and the shop- 
man's patience in his search after a knife, never buying till 
he got the short, stout blade with the like handle. He tied 
his shoes in a hard lover's-knot, and was intensely nice in his 

personal, — 

''Life without thee is loose and spills." 

He faintly piqued his curiosity with pithy hon-mots, such 
as : " Cows in the pasture are good milkers. You cannot travel 
four roads at one time. If you wish the meat, crack the nut. 
If it does not happen soon, it will late. Take time as it comes, 
people for what they are worth, and money for what it buys. 
As the bill, so goes the song; as the bird, such the nest. Time 
runs before men. A good dog never finds good bones. Cherries 
taste sour to single birds. No black milk, no white crows. 
Foul weather and false women are always expected. Occasion 
wears front-hair. No fish, fresh nor salt, when a fool holds 
the line. A poor man's cow — a rich man's child — dies. Sleep 
is half a dinner. A wit sleeps in the middle of a narrow bed. 
Good heart, weak head. Cocks crow as fortune brightens. A 
fool is always starting. At a small spring you can drink at 
your ease. Fire is like an old maid, the best company. Long 
talk and little time. Better days, a bankrupt's purchase. What 
men do, not what they promise." 

"The poor man's childe invited was to dine, 
With flesh of oxen, sheep, and fatted swine, 

[ 276 ] 



PERSONALITIES 

(Far better cheer than he at home could finde,) 

And yet this childe to stay had little minde. 

You have, quoth he, no apple, froise, nor pie, 

Stew'd pears, with bread and milk and walnuts by." 

Hall. 

As the early morning represented to him the spring of the 
day, so did March and April and May ever renew in him his 
never-changing, midying faith in a new life for all things. 
"You must take the first glass of the day's nectar," he says, 
" if you would get all the spirit of it, before its fixed air be- 
gins to stir and escape." Thus he rejoiced greatly in the 
spring-song of birds, — the songs of our familiar blackbird, 

"That comes before the swallow dares," 

and picks the alder catkins and the drift along the river-shore. 
The birds cheered him, too, in the solitudes of winter, when 
the deep snows line the woods, and one needs not only warm 
boots, but a warm heart to tread rejoicingly their congelated 
vicissitudes. These little things — these (to some) trivial expe- 
riences — were to him lofty and ennobling, — raised by his ele- 
vation of thought and subtlety of spirit into intellectual glory. 
Really, his life and its surroundings were one grand whole. 
If he carefully noted what came in the seasons, he no less 
loved the seasons themselves in their full quartette. He was 
of too catholic a temperament not to love them all for what 
they brought. November was the month which impressed him 
as the hardest to front; or, as he phrased it, — "In November 
a man will eat his heart, if in any month." His seriousness 
and his fortitude were native, — and he paddled his boat up 

[ 277 ] 



THOREAU 

and down the river into December, when the drops froze on 
the blade; singing some cheery song, rejoicing with the musk- 
rats, and hstening to the icicles as they jarred against the 
stems of the button-bushes. Yet certainly this inward cheer, 
which surpassed the elements, grew out of no insensibility. 

Originalities in the individual bear the impress of egotism, 
because they differ from the action of the mass; but we must dis- 
tinguish a true and worthy egotism from that captious vanity 
which sets itself above all other values, merely because really 
worthless. Our genius once said, "It is as sweet a mystery to 
me as ever what this world is."" Such is not the utterance of 
the egotist, but of a free and healthy man, living and looking 
for social and natural responses. If he passed over some things 
that others insist on, it was because his time and means were 
fully occupied with other matters, — his capital invested else- 
where. To one (Cholmondeley) who wished to get his opinion 
upon some theories connected with original sin and future 
punishment, he replied, "Those voluntaries I did not take," 
— a term for certain studies at the pleasure of the student in 
Harvard College. (What are since called " electives." ) To use 
his words elsewhere, "Life is not long enough for one man." 

The result of his plan of life, whether conscious or not, was 
joy, — the joy of the universe, — and kindness and industry. 
As he declares of the strawberry, — "It is natural that the 
first fruit which the earth bears should emit (and be, as it 
were, an embodiment of) that vernal fragrance with which the 
air has teemed," — so he represented the purity and sweetness 
of youth, which in him never grew old. 

[ 278 ] 



FIELD SPORTS 



"At length I hailed him, seeing that his hat 
Was moist with water-drops, as if the brim^ 
Had newly scooped a running stream." 

Wordsworth. 

" I, to my soft still walk," 

Donne. 

"Scire est nescire, nisi id me scire alius scierit." 

LuciLius. 

"Unus homo, nullus homo." 

Themistius. 

"What beauty would have lovely styled; 
What manners pretty, nature mild. 
What wonder perfect, all were fil'd 
Upon record in this blest child." 

Ben Jonson. 



1 One of Bewick's vif/nettes pictures him drinking from Ms hat's britn. W. E. C. 



CHAPTER XIV 

FIELD SPORTS 

As an honorary member, Thoreau appertained to the Boston 
Society of Natural History, adding to its reports, besides com- 
paring notes with the care-takers or curators of the mlse en 
scene. To this body he left his collections of plants, Indian 
tools, and the like. His latest traffic with it refers to the num- 
ber of bars or fins upon a pike, which had more or less than 
was decent. He sat upon his eggs with theirs. His city visit 
was to their books, and there he made his call, not upon the 
swift ladies of Spruce Street; and more than once he entered 
by the window before the janitor had digested his omelet, — 

"How kind is Heaven to men!" ,r 

Vaughan. 

When he found a wonder, he sent it, as in the case of the 
ne plus ultra balls from Flint's Pond, in Lincoln, made of 
grass, reeds, and leaves, triturated by washing upon the sandy 
beach, and rolled into polished reddish globes, about the big- 
ness of an orange. A new species of mouse, three Blanding 
cistudas, and several box-turtles (rare here) were among his 
prizes. Of the Cistuda Blandingu^ the herpetologist Holbrook 
says that its sole locality is the Illinois and Wisconsin prairies, 
and the one he saw came from the Fox River, 

''Striving to save the whole, by parcells die." 

On the Andromeda Ponds, between Walden and Fairhaven, he 
found the red snow; for things tropic or polar can be found 

[ 281 ] 



THOREAU 

if looked for. "There is no power to see in the eye itself, any 
more than in any other jelly: we cannot see anything till 
we are possessed with the idea of it. The sportsman had the 
meadow-hens half-way into his bag when he started, and has 
only to shove them down. First, the idea or image of a plant 
occupies my thoughts, and at length I surely see it, though it 
may seem as foreign to this locality as Hudson's Bay is." His 
docility was great, and as the newest botanies changed the 
name of Andromeda to Cassandra, he accepted it, and became 
an accomplice to this tragic deed. Macbeth and Catiline are 
spared for the roses. His annual interest was paid, his banks 
did not fail; the lampreys' nests on the river yet survive, 
built of small stones and sometimes two feet high. It is of 
this petromyzon our fishermen have the funereal idea (as they 
are never seen coming back after going up stream) that they 
all die. The dead suckers seen floating in the river each spring 
inspired his muse. He admired the otters' tracks, the remains 
of their scaly dinners, and the places on the river where they 
amused themselves sliding like boys. He had chased and 
caught woodchucks, but failed in this experiment on a fox; 
and caught, instead of him, a bronchial cold that did him 
great harm. He was in the habit of examining the squirrels' 
nests in the trees: the gray makes his of leaves; the red, of 
grass and fibres of bark. He climbed successively four pines 
after hawks' nests, and was "much stuck up"; and once he 
gathered the brilliant flowers of the white-pine from the very 
tops of the tallest pines, when he was pitched on the highest 
scale. Being strained, by such imprudent exertion, and by that 

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of wheeling heavy loads of driftwood, he impaired his health, 
always doing ideal work. Fishes' nests and spawn — more es- 
pecially of the horn-pout and bream — he often studied; and 
he carried to the entomologist Harris the first lively snow- 
flea he enjoyed. 

'*^In earth's wide thoroughfare below. 
Two only men contented go, — 
Who knows what 's right and what 's forbid. 
And he from whom is knowledge hid." 

Emerson. 

Turtles were his pride and consolation. He piloted a snap- 
ping-turtle, Emysaurus serpentina^ to his house from the river, 
that could easily carry him on his back; and would sometimes 
hatch a brood of these Herculean monsters in his yard. They 
waited for information, or listened to their instinct, before 
setting off for the water. " If Iliads are not composed in our 
day, the snapping-turtle is hatched and arrives at maturity. 
It already thrusts forth its tremendous head for the first time 
in this sphere, and slowly moves from side to side, opening its 
small glistening eyes for the first time to the light, expressive 
of dull rage, as if it had endured the trials of this world for a 
century. They not only live after they are dead, but begin to 
live before they are alive. When I behold this monster thus 
steadily advancing to maturity, all nature abetting, I am con- 
vinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud- 
turtles. With what unshaking tenacity Nature sticks to one 
idea ! These eggs, not warm to the touch, buried in the ground, 
so slow to hatch, are like the seeds of vegetable life. I am af- 

[ 283 ] 



THOREAU 

fected by the thought that the earth nurses these eggs. They 
are planted in the earth, and the earth takes care of them; 
she is genial to them, and does not kill them. This mother is 
not merely inanimate and inorganic. Though the immediate 
mother-turtle abandons her offspring, the earth and sun are 
kind to them. The old turtle, on which the earth rests, takes 
care of them, while the other waddles off. Earth was not made 
poisonous and deadly to them. The earth has some virtue in 
it: when seeds are put into it, they germinate; when turtles' 
eggs, they hatch in due time. Though the mother-turtle re- 
mained and boarded them, it would still be the universal 
World-turtle which, through her, cared for them as now. 
Thus the earth is the maker of all creatures. Talk of Hercules, 
— his feats in the cradle! what kind of nursery has this one 

had.?" 

'^'Life lock't in death, heav'n in a shell." 

The wood-tortoise, Emys insculpta, was another annual 
favorite. It is heard in early spring, after the mud from the 
freshets has dried on the fallen leaves in swamps that border 
the stream, slowly rustling the leaves in its cautious advances, 
and then mysteriously tumbling down the steep bank into 
the river, — a slightly startling operation. He patiently specu- 
lates upon its shingled, pectinately engraved roof or back, 
and its perennial secrets in indelible hierogram. The mud- 
turtle, he thought, only gained its peculiar odors after spring 
had come, like other flowers; and he alludes to the high- 
backed, elliptical shell of the stink-pot covered with leeches. 
Of the trim painted tortoise he asks : " He who painted the 

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FIELD SPORTS 

tortoise thus, what were his designs?" "The gold-bead turtle 
glides anxiously amid the spreading calla-leaves near the warm 
depths of the black brook. I have seen signs of spring : I have 
seen a frog swiftly sinking in a pool, or where he dimpled the 
surface as he leapt in; I have seen the brilliant spots of the 
tortoises stirring at the bottom of ditches ; I have seen the clear 
sap trickling from the red maple. The first pleasant days of 
spring come out like a squirrel, and go in again. I do not 
know at first what charms me." 

THE COMING OF SPRINGi 

With the red leaves its floor was carpeted^ — 
Floor of that Forest-brook across whose weeds 
A trembling tree was thrown, — those leaves so red 
Shed from the grassy bank when Autumn bleeds 
In all the maples ; here the Spring first feeds 
Her pulsing heart with the specked turtle's gold. 
Half-seen emerging from the last year's reeds, — 
Spring that is joyous and grows never old. 
Soft in aerial hope, sweet, and yet well controlled. 

Gently the bluebird warbled his sad song. 
Shrill came the robin's whistle from the hill. 
The sparrows twittering all the hedge along, 
^Vliile darting trout clouded the reed-born rill. 
And generous elm-trees budded o'er the mill. 
Weaving a flower-wreath on the fragrant air ; 
And the soft-moving skies seemed never still. 
And all was calm with peace and void from care. 
Both heaven and earth, and life and all things there. 
1 By Channing. 
[ 285 ] 



THOREAU 

The early willows launched their catkins forth 
To catch the first kind glances of the sun, 
Their larger brethren smiled with golden mirth, 
And alder tassels dropt, and birches spun 
Their glittering rings, and maple buds begun 
To cloud again their rubies down the glen. 
And diving ducks shook sparkling in the run. 
While in the old year's leaves the tiny wren 
Peeped at the tiny titmouse, come to life again. 

Frogs held his contrite admiration. "The same starry 
geometry looks down on their active and their torpid state." 
The little peeping hyla winds his shrill, mellow, miniature 
flageolet in the warm overflowed pools, and suggests to him 
this stupendous image: "It was like the light reflected from 
the mountain ridges, within the shaded portion of the moon, 
forerunner and herald of the spring." He made a regular 
business of studying frogs, — waded for them with freezing 
calves in the early freshet, caught them, and carried them 
home to hear their sage songs. "I paddle up the river to see 
the moonlight and hear the bull-frog." He loved to be pres- 
ent at the instant when the springing grass at the bottoms 
of ditches lifts its spear above the surface and bathes in the 
spring air. "The grass-green tufts at the spring were like a 
green fire. Then the willow-catkins looked like small pearl 
buttons on a waistcoat. The bluebird is like a speck of clear 
blue sky seen near the end of a storm, reminding us of an 
ethereal region and a heaven which we had forgotten. With 
his warble he drills the ice, and his little rill of melody flows a 
short way down the concave of the sky. The sharp whistle of 

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FIELD SPORTS 

the blackbird, too, is heard, Hke single sparks; or a shower 
of them, shot up from the swamp, and seen against the dark 
winter in the rear. Here, again, in the flight of the goldfinch, 
in its ricochet motion, is that undulation observed in so 
many materials, as in the mackerel-sky." He doubts if the 
season will be long enough for such oriental and luxurious 
slowness as the croaking of the first wood-frog implies. Ah, 
how weatherwise he must be! Now he loses sight completely 
of those November days, in which you must hold on to life 
by your teeth. About May 22, he hears the willowy music 
of frogs, and notices the pads on the river, with often a scol- 
loped edge like those tin platters on which country people 
bake "turnovers."'"' The earth is all fragrant as one flower, 
and life perfectly fresh and uncankered. He says of the wood- 
frog, Rana sylvatica: "It had four or five dusky bars, which 
matched exactly when the legs were folded, showing that the 
painter applied his brush to the animal when in that posi- 
tion."'"' The leopard-frog, the marsh-frog, the bull -frog, and 
that best of all earthly singers, the toad, he never could do 
enough for. It was, he says, a great discovery, when first he 
found the ineffable trilling concerto of early summer, after 
sunset, was arranged by the toads, — when the very earth seems 
to steam with the sound. He makes up his mind reluctantly, 
as if somebody had blundered about that time. "It would 
seem then that snakes undertake to swallow toads that are 
too big for them. I saw a snake by the roadside, and touched 
him with my foot to see if he were dead. He had a toad in his 
jaws which he was preparing to swallow, with the latter dis- 

[ 287 ] 



THOREAU 

tended to three times his width ; but he rehnquished his prey, 
and fled. And I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away, 
with his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun (as 
if I, his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations), without 
a shriek or fainting, — I thought, 'What a healthy indiffer- 
ence is manifested ! "" Is not this the broad earth still ?' he said."" 
He thinks the yellow, swelling throat of the bull-frog comes 
with the water-lilies. It is of this faultless singer the good 
young English lord courteously asked, on hearing it warble 
in the Concord marsh one day, "What Birds are those .f*" 

''Dear, harmless age! the short, swift span. 
When weeping virtue parts with man." 

In Thoreau''s view, the squirrel has the key to the pitch- 
pine cone, that conical and spiry nest of many apartments; 
and he is so pleased with the flat top of the muskrafs head 
in swimming, and his back even with it, and the ludicrous way 
he shows his curved tail when he dives, that he cannot fail to 
draw them on the page. Many an hour he spent in watching 
the evolutions of the minnows, and the turtle laying its eggs, 
running his own patience against that of the shell; and at last 
concludes the stink-pot laid its eggs in the dark, having 
watched it as long as he could see without their appearance. 
"As soon as these reptile eggs are laid, the skunk comes and 
gobbles up the nest." Such is a provision of Nature, who keeps 
that universal eating-house where guest, table, and keeper are 
on the bill. 

His near relation to flowers, their importance in his land- 
scape and his sensibility to their colors, have been joyfully re- 

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FIELD SPORTS 

iterated. He criticised his floral children: "Nature made ferns 
for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line. The 
oaks are in the gray, or a little more ; and the deciduous trees 
invest the woods like a permanent mist. What a glorious crim- 
son fire as you look up to the sunlight through the thin edge 
of the scales of the black spruce ! the cones so intensely glow- 
ing in their cool green buds, while the purplish sterile blos- 
soms shed pollen upon you. ... It seemed like a fairy fi-uit 
as I sat looking towards the sun, and saw the red maple-keys, 
made all transparent and glowing by the sun, between me and 
the body of the squirrel." The excessively minute thread-like 
stigmas of the hazel, seen against the light, pleased him with 
their ruby glow, and were almost as brilliant as the jewels of 
an ice-glaze. It is like a crimson star first detected in the twi- 
light. These facts and similar ones, observed afresh each year, 
verify his criticism, that he observes with the risk of endless 
iteration ; he milks the sky and the earth. He alludes to a bay- 
berry bush without fruit, probably a male one, — "it made me 
realize that this was only a more distant and elevated sea- 
beach, and that we were within the reach of marine influences," 
— and he sees "banks sugared with the aster Tradescanti. I 
am detained by the very bright red blackberry-leaves strewn 
along the sod, the vine being inconspicuous, — how they spot 
it! I can see the anthers plainly on the great, rusty, fusty 
globular buds of the slippery elm. The leaves in July are 
the dark eyelash of summer; in May the houstonias are like a 
sugaring of snow. These little timid wayfaring flowers were 
dried and eaten by the Indians, — a delicate meal, — 

[ 289 J 



THOREAU 

''Speechless and calm as infant's sleep. 
"The most interesting domes I behold are not those of ori- 
ental temples and palaces, but of the toadstools. On this knoll 
in the swamp they are little pyramids of Cheops or Cholula 
(which also stand on the plain), very delicately shaded off. 
They have burst their brown tunics as they expanded, leaving 
only a clear brown apex; and on every side these swelling 
roofs or domes are patched and shingled with the fragments, 
delicately shaded off thus into every tint of brown to the edge, 
as if this creation of a night would thus emulate the weather- 
stains of centuries; toads' temples, — so charming is gradation. 
I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the 
alder-cricket, — hear it but see it not, — clear and autumnal, a 
season round. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of 
time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the 
sound of the flail. Such preparations, such an outfit has our life, 
and so little brought to pass. Having found the Calla palustris 
in one place, I soon found it in another." He notes the dark- 
blue domes of the soap- wort gentian. "The beech-trunks 
impress you as full of health and vigor, so that the bark can 
hardly contain their spirits, but lies in folds or wrinkles about 
their ankles like a sock, with the embonpoint of infancy, — a 
wrinkle of fat. The fever-bush is betrayed by its little spherical 
buds, in January. Yellow is the color of spring; red, that of 
midsummer: through pale golden and green we arrive at the 
yellow of the buttercup ; through scarlet to the fiery July red, 
the red lily." He finds treasures in the golden basins of the cis- 
tus. The water-target leaves in mid-June at Walden are scored 

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FIELD SPORTS 

as by some literal characters. Some dewy cobwebs arrange 
themselves before his happy eyes, like little napkins of the 
fairies spread on the grass. The scent of the partridge-berry is 
between that of the rum-cherry and the Mayflower, or like 
peach-stone meats. 

"How hard a man must work in order to acquire his lan- 
guage, — words by which to express himself. I have known a 
particular rush by sight for the past twenty years, but have 
been prevented from describing some of its peculiarities, be- 
cause I did not know its name. With the knowledge of the 
name comes a distincter knowledge of the thing. That shore is 
now describable, and poetic even. My knowledge was cramped 
and confused before, and grew rusty because not used: it be- 
comes communicable, and grows by communication. I can now 
learn what others know about the same thing. In earliest spring 
you may explore, — go looking for radical leaves. What a dim 
and shadowy existence have now to our memories the fair 
flowers whose localities they mark! How hard to find any 
trace of the stem now after it has been flatted under the snow 
of the winter ! I go feeling with wet and freezing fingers amid 
the withered grass and the snow for their prostrate stems, that 
I may reconstruct the plant: — 

'''Who hath the upright heart, the single eye. 
The clean, pure hand?' 

"It is as sweet a mystery to me as ever what this world is. 
The hickories are putting out young, fresh, yellowish leaves, 
and the oaks light-grayish ones, while the oven-bird thrums 
his sawyer-like strains, and the chewink rustles through the 

[ 291 ] 



THOREAU 

dry leaves, or repeats his jingle on a tree-top, and the wood- 
thrush, the genius of the wood, whistles for the first time his 
clear and thrilling strain. It sounds as it did the first time I 
heard it, I see the strong-colored pines, the grass of trees, in 
the midst of which other trees are but as weeds or flowers, a 
little exotic. The variously colored blossoms of the shrub-oaks, 
now in May hang gracefully like ear-drops; the frequent 
causeways and the hedge-rows, jutting out into the meadows, 
and the islands, have an appearance full of life and light. 
There is a sweet, wild world which lies along the strain of the 
wood-thrush, rich intervales which border the stream of its 
song, more thoroughly genial to my nature than any other."" 

I heard the Spring tap at the door of Winter ; 

Silently she drew herself within his house ; 

Softly she with the sun undraped its lights, 

And made her cottage gay. With buds, with flowers, 

With her frail flowers, she painted the soft floors 

Of the romantic woods, and then the trees 

She broke into their clouds of foliage. 

The humming flies came forth, the turtles' gold 

Shone o'er the red-floored brook, the thrasher sang 

His singular song near by. 

O Thou! the life 
That flames in all the maples, and whose hand 
Touches the chords of the mute fields until 
Tliey sing a colored chorus, thou, my God, 
Let mortals kneel until thou callest them! 

The neottia and the rattle-snake plantain are little things 
which make one pause in the wood, — take captive the eye, 

[ 292 ] 



FIELD SPORTS 

The morning-glory by Hubbard's bridge is a goblet full of 
purest morning air, and sparkling with dew, showing the dew- 
point. He scents the perfume of the penny-royal which his 
feet have bruised; the Clethra alnjfolia is the sweet-smelling 
queen of the swamp. The white waxen berries of the white- 
berried or panicled cornel are beautiful, both when full of fruit 
and when its cymes are naked, — delicate red cymes or stems 
of berries, spreading their little fairy fingers to the skies, their 
little palms ;yai?-?/ palms they may be called. "I saw a delicate 
flower had grown up two feet high between the horses' path 
and the wheel-track. An inch more to right or left had sealed 
its fate, or an inch higher; and yet it lived to flourish as much 
as if it had a thousand acres of untrodden space around it, 
and never knew the danger it incurred. It did not borrow 
trouble, nor invite an evil fate by apprehending it."" 

"I think of what times there are, such as when they begin 
to drive cows to pasture. May 20, and when the boys go after 
the cows in July. There is that time about the first of June, 
the beginning of summer, when the buttercups blossom in the 
now luxuriant grass, and I am first reminded of mowing and 
the daisy; when the lady's slipper and the wild-pink have 
come out on the hill-sides amid the goodly company of the 
blue lupines. Then has its summer-hour fairly struck upon the 
clock of the seasons. In distant groves the partridge is sitting 
on her eggs. When the fresh grass waves rank,, and the toads 
dream, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat dis- 
poses us to bathe in the ponds and streams, then is the sum- 
mer begun. I saw how he fed his fish, they, swimming in the 

[ 293 ] 



THOREAU 

dark nether atmosphere of the river, rose easily to swallow 
such swimmers (June-bugs) of the light upper atmosphere, 
and sank to its bottom." He noticed the Datura stramonium 
(thorn-apple) as he was crossing the beach of Hull, and felt as 
if he was on the highway of the world at the sight of this 
veteran and cosmopolite traveller. Nature in July seems like 
a hen with open mouth panting in the grass. He hears then, 
as it were, the mellow sounds of distant horns in the hollow 
mansions of the upper air, and he thinks more than the road- 
fulL "While I am abroad the ovipositors plant their seeds in 
me; I am fly-blown with thoughts, and go home to hatch and 
brood over them. It is now the royal month of August. When 
I hear the sound of the cricket, I am as dry as the rye which 
is everywhere cut and housed, though I am drunk with the 
season's pain. The swallow goes over with a watery twitter- 
ing. The farmer has driven in his cows, and is cutting an 
armful of green corn-fodder for them. The loads of meadow- 
hay pass, which the oxen draw indifferently. The creak of the 
cricket and the sight of the prunella and the autumnal dande- 
lion say : ' Work while it is day, for the night cometh in which 
no man can work.'"" 

"Both the common largest and the smallest hypericums and 
the pin-weeds were very rich browns at a little distance (in 
the middle of March), coloring whole fields, and also withered 
and falling ferns reeking wet. It was a prospect to excite a 
reindeer: these tints of brown were as softly and richly fair 
and sufficing as the most brilliant autumnal tints. There are 
now respectable billows on our vernal seas; the water is very 

[ 294 ] 



FIELD SPORTS 

high, and smooth as ever it is. It is very warm; I wear but 
one coat. On the water, the town and the land it is built on 
seem to rise but little above the flood. I realize how water 
predominates on the surface of the globe; I am surprised to 
see new and unexpected water-lines drawn by the level edge 
of the flood about knolls in the meadows and in the woods, 
— waving lines which mark the boundary of a possible or 
probable freshet any spring. In September we see the ferns 
after the frost, like so many brown fires they light up the 
meadows. In March, when the browns culminated, the sun 
being concealed, I was drawn toward and worshipped the 
brownish light in the sod and the withered grass on barren 
hills; I felt as if I could eat the very crust of the earth, — I 
never felt so terrene, never sympathized so with the surface 
of the earth. At the same date comes the arrow-head crop, 
humanity patent to my eyes as soon as the snow goes off*. Not 
hidden away in some crypt or grave, or under a pyramid, no 
disgusting mummery, but a clean stone ; the best symbol that 
could have been, transmitted to me, the Red Man, his mark. 
They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil thoughts. 
When I see these signs, I know that the maker is not far off", 
into whatever form transmuted. This arrow-headed character 
promises to outlast all others. Myriads of arrow-points lie 
sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth while meteors re- 
volve in space. The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest 
men, — for they have camped on the plains of Mesopotamia 
and Marathon too. ... I heard lately the voice of a hound 
hunting by itself. What an awful sound to the denizens of the 

[ 295 J 



THOREAU 

wood, that relentless, voracious, demonic cry, like the voice 
of a fiend ! at the hearing of which the fox, hare, and marmot 
tremble for their young and themselves, imagining the worst. 
This, however, is the sound which the lords of creation love, 
and accompany with their bugles and mellow horns, conveying 
a singular dread to the hearer, instead of whispering peace to 
the hare's palpitating breast." 

"And their sun does never shine, 

And their fields are bleak and bare. 
And their ways are filled with thorns : 
It is eternal winter there." 

W. Blake. 

"As the pine-tree bends and waves like a feather in the gale, 
I see it alternately dark and light, as the sides of the needles 
which reflect the cool sheen are alternately withdrawn from 
and restored to the proper angle. I feel something like the 
young Astyanax at the sight of his father's flashing crest. A 
peculiarity of these days (the last week of May) is the first 
hearing the cricket's creak, suggesting philosophy and thought. 
No greater event transpires now. It is the most interesting 
piece of news to be communicated, yet it is not in any news- 
paper. I went by Temple's,— for rural interest give me the 
houses of the poor. The creak of the mole cricket has a very 
afternoon sound. The hferon uses these shallows on the river, 
as I cannot,— I give them up to him. I saw a goldfinch eat- 
ing the seeds of the coarse barnyard grass, perched on it: it 
then goes off with a cool twitter. No tarts that I ever tasted 
at any table possess such a refreshing, cheering, encouraging 

[ 296 ] 



FIELD SPORTS 

acid that literally put the heart in you and an edge for this 
world's experiences, bracing the spirit, as the cranberries I 
have plucked in the meadows in the spring. They cut the 
winter's phlegm, and now I can swallow another year of this 
world without other sauce. These are the warm, west-wind, 
dream-toad, leafing-out, willowy, haze days \^May 9\ No in- 
strumental music should be heard in the streets more youth- 
ful and innocent than willow whistles. Children are digging 
dandelions by the roadside with a pan and a case knife."" This 
recalls that paradisiacal condition, — 

COUNTRY-LI VI NGi 

Our reputation is not great. 
Come ! we can omit the date ; 
And the sermon, — truce to it; 
Of the judge buy not a writ, 
But collect the grains of wit, 
And sound knowledge sure to hit. 
Living in the country then. 
Half remote from towns and men, 
With a modest income, not 
More than amputates the scot; 
Lacking vestures rich and rare. 
Those we have the worse for wear. 
Economic of the hat, 
And in fulness like the rat. 
Let us just conclude we are, 
Monarchs of a rolling star! 
Fortune is to live on little, 

1 By Channing. 

[ 297 ] 



THOREAU 

Happily the chip to whittle. 
He who can consume his ills, 
Daintily his platter fills. 

What's the good of hoarding gold? 
Virtue is not bought and sold. 
He who has his peace of mind 
Fears no tempest, seas, nor wind: 
He may let the world boil on. 
Dumpling that is quickly done. 
And can drain his cup so pleasing. 
Not the ear of Saturn teasing ; 
Thus defended in his state. 
Pass its laws without debate, 
And, not wasting friends or fortune. 
Yet no distant stars importune. 

He thus describes the last moments of an unfortunate min- 
ister: "Then this musky lagune had put forth in the erection 
of his ventral fins, expanding suddenly under the influence of 
a more than vernal heat, and his tender white belly where he 
kept no sight, and the minister squeaked his last! Oh, what 
an eye was there, my countrymen, — buried in mud up to the 
lids, meditating on what ? Sleepless at the bottom of the pool, 
at the top of the bottom, directed heavenward, in no danger 
from motes! Pouts expect not snapping- turtles from below. 
Suddenly a mud volcano swallowed him up, — seized his mid- 
riffl He fell into those relentless jaws which relax not even in 
death. 

"I saw the cat studying ornithology between the corn-rows. 
She is full of sparrows, and wants no more breakfast this 

[ 298 ] 



FIELD SPORTS 

morning, unless it be a saucer of milk, — the dear beast! No 
tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech. 
The botanists have a phrase, mantissa, an additional matter 
about something, that is convenient."" He uses "crichicroches, 
zigzagging, brattling, tussucky, trembles, flavid, z-ing"; and 
says of a farmer, that he keeps twenty-eight cows, which are 
milked at four and a half ©""clock a.m.; but he gives his hired 
men none of the milk with their coffee. "Frogs still sound 
round Callitriche Pool, where the tin is cast; no doubt the 
Romans and Ninevites had such places: to what a perfect sys- 
tem this world is reduced ! I see some of those little cells, per- 
haps of a wasp or bee, made of clay: it suggests that these 
insects were the first potters. They look somewhat like small 
stone jugs. Evergreens would be a good title for my things, 
or Gill-go-over-the-ground, or Winter Green, or Checkerberry, 
or Usnea lichens. Methinks the scent is a more oracular and 
trustworthy inquisition than the eye. When I criticise my 
own writing, I go to the scent, as it were. It reveals, of course, 
what is concealed from the other senses; by it, I detect earthi- 
ness. How did these beautiful rainbow tints get into the shell 
of the fresh-water clam, buried in the mud at the bottom of 
our dark river.? 

"When my eyes first rested on Walden, the striped bream 
rested on it though I did not see it, and when Tahatawan 
paddled his canoe there. How wild it makes the pond and the 
township to find a new fish in it! America renews her youth 
here. The bream appreciated floats in the pond as the centre 
of the system, a new image of God. Its life no man can explain 

[ 299 ] 



THOREAU 

more than he can his own. I want you to perceive the mystery 
of the bream : I have a contemporary in Walden. How was it 
when the youth first discovered fishes? was it the number of 
the fin-rays or their arrangement ? No ! but the faint recogni- 
tion of a living and new acquaintance, a friend among the 
fishes, a provoking mystery. 

"I see some feathers of a blue jay scattered along a wood- 
path, and at length come to the body of the bird. What a 
neat and delicately ornamented creature! finer than any work 
of art in a lady''s boudoir, with its soft, light purplish-blue 
crest, and its dark blue or purplish secondaries (the narrow 
half) finely barred with dusky. It is the more glorious to live 
in Concord because the jay is so splendidly painted, ... In 
vain were the brown spotted eggs laid [of a hen-hawk killed], 
in vain were ye cradled in the loftiest pine of the swamp! 
Where are your father and mother.'* will they hear of your 
early death, before ye had acquired your full plumage .^^ They 
who nursed and defended ye so faithfully!" "It is already 
fall [Aiigust 4-] in low swampy woods where the cinnamon-fern 
prevails. So do the seasons revolve, and every chink is filled. 
While the waves toss this bright day, the ducks asleep are drift- 
ing before it across the ponds; snow-buntings are only winged 
snow-balls (where do they pass the night.''). This [April 3] 
might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awak- 
ening of the Meadows; and toad-spawn is like sun-sguawl, 
relating our marshes to Provincetown Beach. We love to wade 
through the shallows to the Bedford shore; it is delicious to 
let our legs drink air. The palustris frog has a hard, dry, un- 

[ 300 ] 



FIELD SPORTS 

musical, fine, watchman's-rattle-like stertoration ; he knows 
no winter. . . . Nature works by contraries: that which in 
summer was most fluid and unresting is now, in February, 
most soUd and motionless. Such is the cold skill of the artist, 
he carves a statue out of a material which is as fluid as water 
to the ordinary workman, — his sentiments are a quarry with 
which he works. I see great bubbles under the ice (as I settle 
it down), three or four feet wide, go waddling or wabbling 
away, like a scared lady impeded by her train. So Nature con- 
denses her matter: she is a thousand thick." 

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you 
find a trout in the milk. 'Says I to Myself," — should be the 
motto to my journal. . . . They think they love God! It is 
truly his old clothes of which they make scarecrows for the 
children. When will they come nearer to God than in those 
very children? Hard are the times when the infants' shoes 
are second-foot, — truncated at the toes. There is one side of 
Abner's house painted as if with the pumpkin pies left over 
after Thanksgiving, it is so singular a yellow: — 
''And foul records 
Which thaw my kind eyes still." 

"I saw the seal of evening on the river. After bathing, even 
at noonday, a man realizes a morning or evening life, — a con- 
dition for perceiving beauty. How ample and generous was 
Nature ! My inheritance is not narrow. The water, indeed, re- 
flects heaven because my mind does. The trivialness of the day 
is past; the greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its cool- 
ness and transparency, are favorable to thought (the pensive 

[ 301 ] 



THOREAU 

eve). The shadow of evening comes to condense the haze of 
noon, the outlines of objects are firm and distinct (chaste eve). 
The sun's rays fell at right angles on the pads and willow- 
stems, I sitting on the old brown geologic rocks, their feet 
submerged and covered with weedy moss. There was a quiet 
beauty in the landscape at that hour which my senses were 
prepared to appreciate. I am made more vigorous by my bath, 
more continent of thought. Every sound is music now in view 
of the sunset and the rising stars, as if there were two persons 
whose pulses beat together." 



[ 302 ] 



CHARACTERS 



"Without misfortunes, what calamity! 
And what hostility without a foe ? " 

Young. 

"O thou quick heart, which pantest to possess 
All that anticipation feigneth fair ! 
Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess 
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou mayst go, 
And that which never yet was known would know." 

Shelley. 

"How seldom. Friend! a good great man inherits 
Honor or wealth, with all his worth and pains ? 
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends, — 
Hath he not always treasures, always friends. 
The great good man ? three treasures, love and light 
And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath." 

Coleridge. 

"The very dust of his writings is gold." 

Bentley of Bishop Pearson. 



CHAPTER XV 

CHARACTERS 

Recourse can once more be had to the note-books of Tho- 
reau''s conversations, as giving his opinions in a familiar sort 
as well as to afford in some measure a shelter from the blasts 
of fate. "Here is news for a poor man, in the raw of a Sep- 
tember morning, by way of breakfast to him." 

SOCIETY 

E. The house looks shut up. 

C. Oh, yes! the owner is gone; he is absolutely out. 

E. We can then explore the grounds, certain not to inter- 
rupt the studies of a philosopher famed for his hospitality. 

C. Now just hop over with your eyes to yonder garden, 
which realizes Goldsmith''s description, "The rusty beds, un- 
conscious of a poke," — or is it Cowper; the rusty nail over 
the latch of the gate; the peach-trees are rusty, the arbors 
rusty, and I think the proprietor, if there be one, is buried 
under that heap of old iron. 

E. But look across the fence into Captain Hardy's^ land: 
there ""s a musician for you, who knows how to make men dance 
for him in all weathers, — all sorts of men. Paddies, felons, 
farmers, carpenters, painters, — yes! and trees and grapes, and 
ice and stone, hot days, cold days. Beat that true Orpheus 

^ This was Captain Abel Moore, whose farm lay between Emerson's and 
Alcott's. 

[ 305 J 



THOREAU 

lyre if you can. He knows how to make men sow, dig, mow, 
and lay stone-wall, and make trees bear fruit God never gave 
them: and foreign grapes yield the juices of France and Spain 
on his south side. He saves every drop of sap, as if it were 
his blood. His trees are full of brandy. See his cows, his horses, 
his swine. And he, the piper that plays the jig which they all 
must dance, biped and quadruped and centipede, is the plain- 
est, stupidest harlequin in a coat of no colors. His are the 
woods, the waters, hills, and meadows. With one blast of his 
pipe, he danced a thousand tons of gravel from yonder blow- 
ing sand-heap to the bog-meadow, where the English grass is 
waving over thirty acres; with another, he winded away sixty 
head of cattle in the spring, to the pastures of Peterboro', in 
the hills. 

C. And the other's ruins ask, with Henry Vaughan: — 

''Why lies this hair despised now, 
Wliich once thy care and art did show? 
Who then did dress the much-loved toy. 
In spires, globes, angry curls and coy, 
Which with skill' d negligence seemed shed 
About thy curious, wild young head.'' 
Why is this rich, this pistic nard 
Spilt, and the box quite broke and marred.''" 

How like you the aspect of the place now we have passed 
the gate? 

E. It seems well designed, albeit the fences are dropping 
away, the arbors getting ready for a decent fall, and the bolts 
and pins lacking in the machinery of the gardens. I think 

[206 ] 



CHARACTERS 

mostly of the owner, whom you, however, know so much better 
than I can. 

C. I know him as I know old fables and Grecian mytholo- 
gies. Further from all this modern life, this juggling activity, 
this superfluous and untamable mediocrity, seems he to re- 
move with each season. Dear Eidolon ^ dwelleth in the rain- 
bow vistas in skies of his own creating. No man in history 
reminds me of him, nor has there been a portrait left us of 
so majestic a creature, who certainly hath more a fabled and 
half-divine aspect than most of those so liberally worshipped 
by the populace. Born in the palmy days of old Greece, and 
under the auspices of Plato, he would have founded a school 
of his own, and his fame had then descended to posterity by 
his wise sayings, his lovely manners, his beautiful person, and 
the pure austerities of a blameless and temperate life. Gladly 
had the more eminent sculptors of the Athenian metropolis 
chiselled in stone his mild and serene countenance, his vener- 
able locks; and in the free and majestic garb of those pic- 
turesque eras he would have appeared as the most graceful 
and noble of all their popular figures. He would have founded 
their best institutions, especially chosen by the youth of both 
sexes, and all who loved purity, sanctity, and the culture of 
the moral sentiment had flocked about this convenient and 
natural leader. Nor should his posthumous writings have been 
left inedited; for the worthiest of his scholars, seizing upon 
these happy proofs of his indefatigable industry, and such 
evidences of his uninterrupted communications with higher 
1 Bronson Alcott in 1853. 
[ 307 ] 



THOREAU 

natures, would have made it the most chosen pleasure of his 
life to have prepared them in an orderly and beautiful de- 
sign for coming ages. I Icnow not but he had been worshipped 
formally, in some peculiar temple set apart for his particular 
religion, for there inevitably springs out of him a perfect 
cultus, which a wise and imaginative age could have shaped 
into its practical advantage. Born upon a platform of sordid 
and mechanical aims, he has somewhat eclipsed and atrophied, 
and, if detected critically, blurred with scorn or ridicule, so 
that perchance he had been more pleasantly omitted from all 
observation. 

T. Thou hast drawn, O Musophilus! the portrait of a null 
imaginary paragon. I have not seen the Phoenix of whom 
thou hast been discoursing. 

E. No: there is not much of the worshipping kind in thee, 
though thou shouldst pass well for being worshipped. Thou 
art, I fear, among the scoffers. Be certain that the truth is 
so; that our ancient Eidolon does represent those aspects of 
the worthier ages, and yet shall his memory be respected for 
these properties. 

C. I admire not thy notices and puffs of a better age, of a 
happier time : Don Quixote's oration to the goat -herds should 
have despatched that figment. I like better Jarno*'s opinion, 
— "our America is here or nowhere." Beneath our eyes grow 
the flowers of love, religion, sentiment, and valor. To-day is 
of all days the one to be admired. Alas for the sentimental 
tenderness of Jean Paul, that amusing madman with a rem- 
nant of brains! he has flung up his Indian ocean with the 

[ 308 ] 



CHARACTERS 

peacock-circle of its illuminated waves before our island; and 
Thomas Carlyle with his bilious howls and bankrupt draughts 
on hope distracts us. Give this class of unhappy people a little 
more room and less gloom. What canker has crept into so 
many kind-hearted creatures to deride our respectable times .f* 
I believe, too, in the value of Eidolon, but it is as good com- 
pany. There are no milestones, no guide-posts, set up in that 
great listener''s waste. His ears are open spaces, abysses of air 
into which you may pour all day your wisest and best, your 
moonshine and your dreams, and still he stands like one ready 
to hear. All other men seem to me obstructive. Their minds 
are full of their own thoughts, — things of Egypt, as Mr. Bor- 
row's gypsy Antonio calls them, — but Eidolon has reached 
this planet for no purpose but to hear patiently, smoothly, 
and in toto the doings of your muse ; and if he replies, it is in 
a soft, sweet, and floating fashion, in a sea of soap-bubbles 
that sets your dull phlegmatism going, loosens the rusty 
anchor of your cupidity, and away sails your sloop. 

T. What we so loosely name a community should have 
been the appropriate sphere for this excellent genius. Even in 
these flatulent attempts they demand what they call a practi- 
cal man, a desperate experimenter, sure to run the communal 
bank under the water. A few gravelly acres, some dry cows and 
pea-hens to saw up the sunny noons, with our good Eidolon at 
the head, behold a possible community. In his pocket lies the 
practical man's notions of communing, — I mean his purse. 

E. I have fancied Cervantes shadows in his novel the his- 
tory of our socialists. 

[ 309 ] 



THOREAU 

C. Not of the whole : ere long the community must be the 
idea and the practice of American society. Each year more 
clearly sets forth the difficulties under which we labor to 
conduct the simplest social operations, like mere household 
service. Such a rough grindstone is your Christian American 
family to the hard-worked Irish girl, and wild is the reaction 
of the strong-tempered blade on the whirling stone. To make 
coffee and bake bread, — not to do the thing for yourself con- 
stitutes the person who does it at once the possessor of your 
moneys, goods, and estate; and, from the lack of sympathy 
and equality in the contract, Bridget slides out of your 
kitchen the victor in this unequal contest, when you have 
made her by your lessons valuable to others. And what bet- 
ter is your relation with the gentleman you send to Wash- 
ington by means of your votes and good wishes, having his 
eye bent on the main chance. Cities are malignant with 
crime; paupers are classed and studied like shrimps; the 
railroad massacres its hundreds at a smash; steamboats go 
down, and blow up; and these evils are increasing steadily, 
till the social crisis comes. Nothing for all these cases but 
the community, no more selfish agents, no corporations fight- 
ing each other, no irresponsible actors, — all must be bound 
as one for the good of each, labor organized for the whole 
equally. 

E. We have sat too long in this crazy arbor: it is conta- 
gious. Let us walk amid last year's stalks. "Little joy has he 
who has no garden,"" says Saadi. "He who sees my garden 
sees my heart," said the prince to Bettine. I prefer the names 

[ 310 ] 



CHARACTERS 

of pears to those of most men and women. Our little gentle- 
man, with his gaseous inflamed soul, can never be satisfied 
with that little which he needs and not for long. Satisfied! 
No, Faintheart, you are as unsatisfied as the toper without 
his glass, the maid without her lover, or the student without 
his book. 

T. I can allow thee, mortal as I am, but six minutes to 
tell thy story. What needest thou, then, added to that thou 
hast.'^ Community, indeed! a mere artifice of the do-nothings 
to profit by the labors of industry. There thou art, with thy 
five feet eight in thy shoes, and a certain degree of bodily 
vigor and constitution. I have not heard thee complain of the 
headache or the gout; thou hast never St. Anthony's fire; thy 
corns, if thou hast, are limited; and thou canst, on occasion, 
plod thy dozen of miles and not expire. Let us agree that 
middle-age has come, and one half the vital candle has been 
burnt and snuffed away. Some kind of shed, with a moderate 
appurtenance of shingle, belongs to your covering, on the out- 
skirts of yonder village; some little table-linen, not damask 
I grant; maybe a cup of coffee to your breakfast, and some 
crust of haddock, or soured residuum of starch, called bread, 
to thy meal. Of clothing thou hast not cloth of gold, — we 
are plain country people and decline it. A few friends remain, 
as many or more than thou hast deserved. Having all this, 
some liberty and hope of Marston's^ immortality (that depends 
on personal value), I seriously demand, what more could you 
have.'' Can nothing appease the ever disorderly cravings of 
1 Marston Watson of Plymouth. 
[311 ] 



THOREAU 

that adamantine contradiction, thy imbecile soul? Buy him 
up or flatter him into quiet; or could you not give him away 
or sell him into splendid exile? at least, expunge him! 

C. Whichever way we choose in the fields, or down the loco- 
motive spine that bands with yellow the else green meadow, 
you will observe the haymaker. Now is the high holiday 
and the festival of that gramineous sect; now are the cattle 
kneeled to by humanity ; and all these long baking days there 
they toil and drudge, collating the winter hay-mow of cow 
and ox, determined by some secret fate to labor for an in- 
ferior race. 

E. They are so serious in such matters, one might suppose 
they never speculate on the final cause of pitching hay. 

C. Just as seriously this excellent society contemplates the 
butcher, the grocer, or the clergyman. As if, given time and 
the human race, at once follows absurd consequence. Spring 
to your pitch, jolly haymakers! you fancy you are putting 
time to good advantage in chopping away so many innocent 
spires of grass, drying them, and laying them industriously 
in the mow. In spite of that official serenity which nothing 
can disturb, if you would forego the cow and horse from your 
contemplations you might leave the grass unmown for ever 
and a day. Organize an idea among the brethren of spending 
their hours after a certain fashion, and then woe be to the 
lunatics who discern its imperfections. In history, haymaking 
may figure as an amazing bit of the antique, and pitchforks 
be exhibited in museums for curiosities. 

E. I understand your jest: it is your old notion to abbre- 
[ 312 ] 



CHARACTERS 

viate human work. You would fain introduce the study of 
botany or metaphysics for these vigorous games of our sun- 
burnt swains, and convert them into sedentary pedants, to 
be fed on huckleberries and mast. In the sweat of thy face 
shalt thou earn thy bread. Labor comes out of human exist- 
ence, like the butterfly out of the caterpillar. 

C. How tremendously that vigorous Hibernian pokes aloft 
his vast pitchfork of blue timothy ! May I never be seated on 
the prong! And his brogue is as thick as his hay-mow. No law 
ever made such a police as labor. "Early to bed and early to 
rise" grows by farming. Tire him, says Destiny; wear him out, 
arms, legs, and back; secure his mischievous wild energy; get 
him under, the dangerous cartridge he is, of exploding unli- 
censed sense; and whether it be good for cow or horse, what- 
ever the means, the end is delightful. Nature must have made 
the human race, like most of her things, when she had the 
chance, and without consideration of the next step. She drove 
along the business, and so invented mankind as rapidly as pos- 
sible; and observing the redskin, cousin to the alligator, — 
living on the mud of rivers, the sap of trees, with a bit of flat 
stone for his hatchet, and a bit of pointed stone for his cannon, 
— Redskin, a wild fellow, savage and to the manner born, — 
leaving the woods and fields, the flowers, insects, and minerals 
untouched, she was thus far content. This imperfect redskin 
was surely some improvement upon the woodchuck and the 
musquash. But after coming to the age of bronze, the Danish 
Kitchen-moddings, and the Swiss lake-dwellings, some million 
centuries, and a certain development, the aboriginal began to 

[ 313 ] 



THOREAU 

develop a new series of faculties that Nature in eliminating 
him never thought nor dreamed of; for we must carefully 
confess Nature misses imagination. Our redskin had fenced 
himself from bears and deer with their own skins, lit a peren- 
nial fire (was it not hard, yet to be expected in the Greeks, 
that they had never a temple of Prometheus?), dug out some 
stones and melted them, burnt the trunks of trees into boats, 
at length built houses, and all the while with his arts, fine or 
coarse, grew up his passions. Our whiteskin — for now the 
color of him, by shelter and clothing, had turned white — 
became a cultivated savage, and, still luxuriating in his old 
cannibal propensities, hacked and hewed, fought and killed 
his kind, much to the surprise of his sleepy mother; and not 
after the honest primeval fashions that she liked well enough, 
being of her own invention, but after every excruciating de- 
vice of artist-demonism. Now what could she do for him, how 
keep him in place, circumvent his trucidating mania, and 
make him somewhat helpless? It was the work of a moment 
(Nature''s moments being rather extended), an accident. She 
not only taught whiteskin how to work, but he came to be 
just a mere laboring machine; the savage had his insouciance, 
the civilizee has his competitive industry, — "Dearest, choose 
between the two!"" 

T. This new toy is the true Danaides sieve, the rock of 
Tantalus, which is christened industry, economy, or money. 
Like the boy''s toad in the well, whose position his master set 
him to make out as a task, — the toad jumping one step up 
and falling two steps back, how long would it require for 

[ 314 ] 



CHARACTERS 

him to get to the top? The boy ciphered a long time and 
filled his slate, went through "recess," and noon and after- 
noon: at last his instructor asked him, after keeping him at 
it all day, as to his progress and how far he had got the 
toad. "What?" said the boy, — "that toad, that nasty little 

toad? Why, to be sure, he''s half-way down into by this 

time." That is where the great mother, blessings on her com- 
fort, has located our brother-man, with his pitchfork, plough- 
tail, and savings-bank. 

C. It is the consequence of a quandary, this boasted civili- 
zation, as Fourier terms it, when Nature, having hurried her 
poor plucked creature into existence (even if Darwin thinks 
he rubbed off his wool, climbing bread-fruit trees and flinging 
down cocoa-nuts to his offspring), was compelled for safety 
to set up this golden calf, this lovely mermaid-civilization, 
with a woman's head and a fish's tail, clipper-ships, and daily 
papers. Expediency is Nature's mucilage, her styptic. Never 
shall we see the terminus of this hastily built railroad, no 
station. But there must be a race that will; when the mind 
shall be considered before the belly, and when raising food 
for cows, other things being possible, may not be to every 
human being just an inscrutable penalty. Cows may get post- 
poned, after a time, for mere men and women ; but even milk- 
ing a beast is a better course of policy than cutting holes in 
your brother's skull with a bushwhack. Our mythology hath 
in it a great counterpoise of ethics and compensation. The 
Greeks hung aloft their theoretical people, where at least 
they could do no harm if they did not any benefit; while 

[315] 



THOREAU 

some of our goodies to-day seem to be, like the spider, spin- 
ning an immortal coil of ear-wax. 

T. I strive to be courtesy itself, yet I may not accept thy 
fact nor thy conclusion. That redskin was nearer nature, was 
truer than this pale-face; his religion of the winds, the waters, 
and the skies, was clearer and fresher than your dry and desic- 
cated theologies, dug out of Egyptian tombs and Numidian 
sandbanks. He properly worshipped the devil, the evil spirit, 
wisely agreeing that if the good spirit was of that ilk he was 
harmless, like the Latins, whom I look upon as the best type 
of Indians that ever lived. As Tiberius says, who made his 
Latin rhyme (no doubt they had as much rhyme as they 
wanted), ^^deorum injiiriw, dis curce^'' — "the gods may cut 
their own corns for all me." Or what old Ennius thinks: — 

''Ego deum genus dixi et dicam coelitum, 
Sed eos iion curare^ opinor, quid agat humanum genus ; 
Nam, si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest." 

In other words, "I know all about your race of gods, but 
little they trouble their heads about your folks; if they cared 
a snap, they would see the good well off and the bad pun- 
ished, which is just the opposite to the fact."" Is not that good 
Indian .^^ Or what Lucan says in his "Pharsalia'" (vii. 447): — 

" Mentimur regnare Jovem . . . mortalia nulli 
Sunt curata Deo." 

"Every fool knows it's a lie that Jove reigns, — the gods 
don't busy their brains about such nobodies as men." I try to 
give you the ideas of these solemn Latin savages, who had 

[316] 



CHARACTERS 

neither hats to their heads, shirts to their bodies, nor shoes 
to their feet. Why might not some learned professor derive 
us from the Romans? I beHeve a return to the savage state 
would be a good thing, interpolating what is really worthy 
in our arts and sciences and thousand appliances, — 

'^Tliat the wind blows, 
Is all that anybody knows." 

C. I believe in having things as they are not! Ay, down to 
the dust with them, slaves as they are! Down with your towns, 
governments, tricks and trades, that seem like the boy who 
was building the model of a church in dirt as the minister 
was passing! "Why, my little lad," said he, "why! making a 
meeting-house of that stuff? Why, why!" "Yes," answered 
the youth, "yes, I am; and I expect to have enough left over 
to make a Methodist minister besides." 

T. There is always some new fatality attending our civility. 
Here is our town, six miles square, with so many dogs and 
cats, so many men and women upon it, a town library and a 
bar-room, taxes, prisons, churches, railroads, — and always 
more and more to come. And I must be taxed as well as the 
others; as if I am ripe for chains or the gibbet, because the 
drunkard, poisoned with his own rum while selling it for 
the good of his neighbors, dies of cerebral congestion or a pis- 
tol. Society has no definitions, and of course no distinctions; 
accepts no honesties, believes too much in going to the bad. 

C. You are over-critical. The true art of life consists in 
accepting things as they are, and not endeavoring vainly to 

[ 317 ] 



THOREAU 

better them. It is but a drawing of lots. I am melted when I 
see how finely things come out, and pin-pricks decide grave 
affairs. A certain man (I will not name him here, as person- 
alities must be avoided) determined to keep house on a better 
plan: no flies, no bills, — even the cry of offspring at night 
cancelled. This was enough evil for that day : the next all the 
doors were open, flies abounded, children cried in swarms, 
cash for bills was needed. Our friend began again with it all, 
put his reforms in practice, and serenity came from his efforts 
for the time being; but there is another relapse as soon as his 
hand leaves the crank of the household. So he consults Mrs. 
Trip, — she has experience as a housekeeper, — details his 
wretchedness: life is at such a pass, expense vast, little to be 
had for it and nothing to defray it; a ream of German fly- 
paper has produced double the number of flies that it kills; as 
for his babies, there seems to have been a combination among 
them to blow their lungs out with squalls. Mrs. Trip heard 
the social horrors, and said, "Mr. Twichett, excuse me, there 
is a little matter." "Yes, mum, I know it," says our gentle- 
man, supposing it the latest infant or the bill for salt-fish. 
"It appears, Mr. Twichett, that you keep your eyes open. 
Yes, sir ! you keep your eyes open." 

CHRYSOSTOMl 

C. I lately paid a visit upon an ingenious gentleman, and 
found him mopping up a topic which had a singular impor- 
tance in his eyes, and that was New England. "Indeed," I 

1 This was Alcott in another aspect. 
[318 J 



CHARACTERS 

thought, "a fine subject for the dead of winter!" You must 
know, sir, that fi'iend Chrysostora presents the aspect of man 
talking, as dear Eidolon thinking. And, as the honey-lipped 
philosopher is about to embark on a voyage to the provinces, 
he is resolved to enlighten them there on this his favorite 
problem. "Indeed,"" I thought to myself, "this man, like Cur- 
tius, is also a hero in his way: he is a man of parts; and, next 
to beating carpets on the Common, I must say he chooses de- 
lightful subjects."" I fell upon him with my modern flail, to 
see what grain I could find amid his glittering straws. 

T. And how did you prosper.? Was there much sediment 
in the husk.'' 

C. Chrysostom is too learned a master of his weapon to 
abandon all his treasure to the unreserved gaze of each in- 
credulous worldling. He has, however, attained proximately to 
something that might be termed a criticism of New England. 
Good, bad, or indifferent, ^tis not a pure vacuity that one 
finds in this pitiful corner of a continent, with Cape Cod for 
a seacoast and Wachusett for a mountain. Chrysostom has 
picked his men as specimens of the mass; his persons on which 
he so much insists, the merchant, the scholar, the reformer, 
the proser, and what not, — along the dusty high-roads of life, 
but you may not greatly expand the list. A few serenities 
stand sentinel on the watch-towers of thought, not as stars 
to the mass, but as burnt-out tar barrels. Materialism carves 
turkeys and cuts tunnels. Be bright, my dear talker, shine 
and go along; as Dante says, "Hurry on your words.*" I 
deemed not so much of his topics as of the man himself, 

[319] 



THOREAU 

greater far than all his topics, the ultimate product of all the 
philosophies, with an Academe of Types. He has caught the 
universe on his thumbnail, and cracked it; he has been at 
the banquet of the gods, and borrowed the spoons. Most other 
men have some superstitious drawback to them, some want of 
confidence in their universal wholes. But our great friend, with 
his muscular habit of thought, grasps hold of infinity and 
breaks it across his arm, as Gusta^aIS Adolphus, that hero of 
Captain Dalgetty''s, a horse-shoe. "Never," said he, "can you 
get a good brain until all the people of the earth are poured 
into one, and when the swarthy Asiatic thinks in the same 
skull with the ghostly Swede. And soon I see that this rail- 
road speed of the age shall transmigrate into the brain. Then 
shall we make the swiftness of the locomotive into the swift- 
ness of the thought; and the great abolition society shall come, 
not of slavery alone, — in dress and diet, in social relations 
and religion. It may not prevail for a pair of hermits to go 
out together and make a community; for so shall they be the 
more solitary. You think the men are too near that I should 
draw their portraits truly ; but you know not that I am living 
as one dead, and that my age is like one walking far off in a 
dream to me. That golden steed, the Pegasus, on which I am 
mounted, has shot with me far beyond the thoughts and the 
men of to-day." As he said this, I looked up at the window, 
certainly expecting to see some sort of strange apparition in 
the air, some descent of a sign from heaven upon this glorious 
expansion beyond time; but all I could see was a fat serving- 
maid, in a back casement, arranging some furniture with a 
[ 320 ] 



CHARACTERS 

vacillating rag. Types of the ideal and the real, I thought to 
myself. 

"Man should never for an instant blame the animals,"'"' he 
continued, "for showing their apparent inferiorities: they do 
simply formalize our sins; and Agorax should beware of pork, 
or he is feasting upon his ancestry. The tail of the dog is 
the type of the affections." No matter how dry the topic, it 
seems as if Chrysostom had plunged down into the cellar of 
the gods, and moistened his intellectual clay at every golden 
cider-bung. "Nature is a fine setting for man; and when I 
speak of the New English, how can I forget the departure 
from their old abbeys, green fields, and populated wheat -lands 
for this sour fish-skin? Three degrees of elevation towards the 
pole overturn all jurisprudence, and virtue faints in the city 
of the Pilgrims. The handsome youth fires the tragic pistol, 
the handsome girl seeks her swift revenge on prose in her 
opium. And in these architectures cold, still, and locked, in 
these flat, red-brick surfaces, and the plate-glass windows 
that try to flatten your nose when you think to look in, — do 
you not behold something typical .'^ This prismatic nucleus of 
trade, deducting its tolls from the country through its roads, 
is drawing Vermont and New Hampshire and floating them 
away o'er yon glittering blue sea between those icy islands! 
Some smaller German orchestra leads off" the musical ear, and 
the shops are cracking with French pictures that would not 
be sold in Paris. The merchant has his villa, his park, and his 
caleche: it is the recoil of the passions; it is fate, and no star 
of heaven is visible. The oak in the flower-pot might serve as 

[ 321 ] 



THOREAU 

a symbol; or, as Jugurtha said, when he was thrust into his 
prison, 'Heavens, how cold is this bath of yours!' If the All- 
Father had said to our metaphysical Northman, to this Brain- 
berserkir: Come and sit thee beneath the fluttering palms, 
and listen to the flow of lordly rivers; thee will I feed on 
orient pearls of dew, thy bed shall be of sun-flowers, thy dress 
of the gossamer twilight!" 

TO ALCOTT 

Light from the spirit-land, 
Fire from a burning brand, 
If in this cold sepulchral clime, 
Chained to an unmelodious rhyme, 

Thou slowly moulderest, — 
Yet cheer that great and humble heart. 
Prophetic eye and sovereign part. 
And be thy future greatly blest. 
And by some richer gods impressed. 

And a sublimer art. 

Strike on ! nor still the golden lyre. 
That sparkles with Olympian fire, 
And be thy words the soul's desire 

Of this dark savage land ; 
Nor shall thy sea of glory fail 
Whereon thou sweepest, — spread thy sail. 
And blow and fill the heaviest gale. 

It shall not swerve thy hand. 

Born for a fate whose secrets none 
Shall gaze upon beneath earth's sun, 

[ 322 ] 



CHARACTERS 

Child of the high, the only One, 

Thy glories sleep secure ; 
Yet on the coast of heaven thy wave 
Shall dash beyond an unknown grave. 
And cast its spray to light and save 

Some other barks that moor! 



[ 323 ] 



MORAL 



" Exactissima norma Romanse frugalitatis." 

Said of Mannius Curius. 

"Laborers that have no land 
To lyve on but hire handes." 

Piers Plowman. 

"Les gros bataillons^ ont toujours raison." 

JOMINI. 

"The day that dawns in fire will die in storms. 
Even though the noon be calm." 

Shelley. 

"When thou dost shine, darkness looks white and fair, 
Frowns turn to music, clouds to smiles and air." 

Vaughan. 

"Dum in Proelio non procul hinc 
Inclinatam suorum aciem 
Mente manu voce et exemplo 
Restituebat 

Pugnans ut heroas decet 
Occubuit," Marshal Keith's Epitaph. 



1 Frederick the Great has the same saying with the word " regiments "for " bataillons.' 



CHAPTER XVI 

MORAL 

What a life is the soldier's, — like other men's! what a mas- 
ter is the world! Heaven help those who have no destiny to 
fulfil, balked of every chance or change, of all save the cer- 
tainty of death! Thoreau had a manifest reason for living. 
He used to say, "I do not know how to entertain those who 
can't take long walks. A night and a forenoon is as much 
confinement to those wards (the house) as I can stand." And 
although the rich and domestic could "beat him in frames," 
like that Edinburgh artist whom Turner thus complimented, 
he was their match in the open. Men affected him more natu- 
rally. "How earthy old people become, — mouldy as the grave. 
Their wisdom smacks of the earth: there is no foretaste of 
immortality in it. They remind one of earth-worms and mole- 
crickets." Seeing the negro barber sailing alone up the river 
on a very cold Sunday, he thinks he must have experienced 
religion; a man bathing from a boat in Fairhaven Pond sug- 
gests: "Who knows but he is a poet in his yet obscure and 
golden youth.?" And he loved to go unmolested. He would 
not be followed by a dog nor cane. He said the last was too 
much company. When asked whether he knew a young miss, 
celebrated for her beauty, he inquired, "Is she the one with 
the goggles?" He thought he never noticed any one in the 
street; yet his contemporaries may have known as much of 
him while living as of Shakespeare when dead. His mental 

[ 327 ] 



THOREAU 

appearance at times almost betrayed irritability; his words 
were like quills on "the fretful porcupine" (a libel on the crea- 
ture, which is patience ah ovo). One of his friends complained 
of him: "He is so pugnacious I can love, but I can never like 
him.*" And he had a strong aversion to the Scribes and Phari- 
sees. Those cracked potsherds, traditionary institutions, served 
him as butts, against whose sides he discharged the arrows of 
his wit, echoing against their massive hoUowness. Yet, truly, 
the worship of beauty, of the fine things in nature, of all 
good and friendly pursuits, was his staple; he enjoyed com- 
mon people; he relished strong, acrid characters. In Boston 
he used to visit the end of Long Wharf, having no other busi- 
ness than with the libraries and that brief sight of the sea, 
so fascinating to a landsman. (This made our friend [Calvin] 
Green ^ say, who happened to have spent forty out of forty- 

1 Calvin H. Green, a mechanic of Rochester, Michigan, admiring Thoreau, 
made for Ellery Channing a long cane from the wood of the CaUfornian 
manzanilla (an evergreen shrub, bearing a bright red apple), selecting as 
a motto for its silver head, — 

"Love equals swift and slow. 
And high and low." 
This was intended for Thoreau himself; but he dying before it was ready, 
Mr. Green gave it to Mr. Channing, with the additional inscription, 
"Thoreau-Channing — Friendship." (This cane E. C. has given to F. B. S.) 
Mr. Green came to Concord, September 1, 1863, and stayed a week, visit- 
ing Channing, Emerson, the Thoreau family, and myself; he walked with 
Channing to Walden, the Cliffs, and the Estabrook country — passing, on 
the way to the latter, Thoreau's cabin, on Clarke's farm, where it stood 
till it fell in pieces, about June, 1868. It lasted twenty-three years, and 
might have stood a century, vnth care, being well built, but poorly roofed. 
Another lover of Thoreau, named Harrington, came from Indiana in Sep- 
tember, 1866, who told Channing that Thoreau's death had caused him 

[ 328 ] 



MORAL 

five years in a back country [Rochester, Michigan], that he 
"had taken a boat-ride on the Atlantic") 

When with temperaments radically opposed to his, he drew 
in the head of his pugnacity like that portion of one of his 
beloved turtles, and could hiss and snap with any ancient of 
them all. The measured, conservative class, dried-up Puritan 
families, who fancy the Almighty Giver of all good things 
has fitted their exquisite brain precisely to his evangelic night- 
cap; prosers with their universe of meanness and conceit to 
change square with you against gold and diamonds; folks of 
easy manners, polished and oiled to run sharply on the track 
of lies and compliments, — of siich he was no great admirer. 
Neither did he go with Goethe, that other people are wig- 
blocks on which we must fit our own false heads of hair to 
fetch them out. Like a cat he would curl up his spine and 
spit at a fop or monkey, and despised those who were run- 
ning well down hill to damnation. His advice to a drunkard 
as the wisest plan for him to reform, "You had better cut 
your throat,"" — that was his idea of moral suasion, and cor- 
responded with his pleasure at John Brown"'s remark of a 
border ruffian he had despatched, rapidly paring away his 
words, — "He had a perfect right to be hung."" To this his 
question points, — "If it were not for virtuous, brave, gen- 
more sorrow than that of any person he had ever known. He had never 
seen him. Channing went with him to Walden. 

Thoreau quoted to Alcott, as having come to him in a dream, the old 
hne of Storer : — 

"His short parenthesis of Hfe was sweet," 
which may have had reference to John Thoreau. 

[ 329 ] 



THOREAU 

erous natures, would there be any sweet fragrance? Genius 
rises above nature; in spite of heat, in spite of cold, works and 
lives.''"' Persons with whom he had no sympathy were to him 
more removed than stocks and stones: — 

"Looking at the latter, I feel comparatively as if I were 
with my kindred. Men may talk about measures till all is 
blue and smells of brimstone, and then go home and expect 
their measures to do their duty for them: the only measure 
is integrity and manhood. We seem to have used up all our 
inherited freedom like the young bird the albumen in the 
shell. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty ! I can- 
not overstate this advantage, I am perhaps more wilful than 
others. Common life is hasty, coarse, and trivial, as if you 
were a spindle in a factory. No exercise implies more manhood 
and vigor than joining thought to thought. How few men 
can tell what they have thought ! I hardly know half a dozen 
who are not too lazy for this. You conquer fate by thought. 
If you think the fatal thought of men and institutions, you 
need never pull the trigger. The consequences of thinking 
inevitably follow. There is no more Herculean task than to 
think a thought about this life, and then get it expressed. 
There are those who never do or say anything, whose life 
merely excites expectation. Their excellence reaches no further 
than a gesture or mode of carrying themselves; they are a 
sash dangling from the waist, or a sculptured war-club over 
the shoulder. They are like fine-edged tools gradually becom- 
ing rusty in a shop- window. I like as well, if not better, to see 
a piece of iron or steel out of which such tools will be made, 

[ 330 ] 



MORAL 

or the bushwhack in a man's hand. . . . 

"The watchmaker finds the oil from the porpoise's jaw the 
best thing for oiling his watches. Man has a million eyes, and 
the race knows infinitely more than the individual. Consent 
to be wise through your race. We are never prepared to be- 
lieve that our ancestors lifted large stones or built thick walls. 
. . . There is always some accident in the best things, whether 
thoughts, or expressions, or deeds. The memorable thought, 
the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours. 
The thought came to us because we were in a fit mood; also 
we were unconscious and did not know that we had said or 
done a good thing. We must walk consciously only part way 
toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. 
What we do best or most perfectly is what we most thor- 
oughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it fell 
from us without our notice as a leaf from a tree. It is the last 
time we shall do it, — our unconscious leavings: — 

'''Man is a summer's day, whose youth and fire 

Cool to a glorious evening and expire.' (Vaughan.) 

"It is remarkable how little we attend to what is con- 
stantly passing before us, unless our genius directs our at- 
tention that way. In the course of ages the rivers wriggle in 
their bed until it feels comfortable under them. Time is cheap 
and rather insignificant. It matters not whether it is a river 
which changes from side to side in a geological period, or an 
eel that wriggles past in an instant. A man's body must be 
rasped down exactly to a shaving. The mass of men are very 

[331 ] 



THOREAU 

unpoetic, yet that Adam that names things is always a poet. 
No man is rich enough to keep a poet in his pay, yet what 
a significant comment on our life is the least strain of music. 
This poor, timid, unenlightened, thick-skinned creature, what 
can it believe.? When I hear music, I fear no danger; I am 
invulnerable; I see no foe; I am related to the earliest times, 
and to the latest. I hear music below; it washes the dust off 
my life and everything I look at. The field of my life be- 
comes a boundless plain, glorious to tread, with no death or 
disappointment at the end of it. In the light of this strain 
there is no Thou nor I. How inspiring and elysian it is to 
hear when the traveller or the laborer, from a call to his horse 
or the murmur of ordinary conversation, rises into song! It 
paints the landscape suddenly; it is at once another land, — 
the abode of poetry. Why do we make so little ado about 
echoes? they are almost the only kind of kindred voices that 
we hear: — 

"'Scattering the myrrhe and incense of thy prayer.'" 

A coxcomb was railed at for his conceit: he said, "It is so 
common every one has it; why notice it specially in him.?" 
He gets up a water-color sketch of an acquaintance.^ "He 
is the moodiest person perhaps I ever saw. As naturally whim- 
sical as a cow is brindled, both in his tenderness and in his 
roughness he belies himself. He can be incredibly selfish and 
unexpectedly generous. He is conceited, and yet there is in 
him far more than usual to ground conceit upon. He will not 

^ It was Channing himself. 
[ 332 ] 



MORAL 

stoop to rise. He wants something for which he will not pay 
the going price. He will only learn slowly by failure, not a 
noble but a disgraceful failure, and writes poetry in a sublime 
slip-shod style." But despite his caveats^ his acceptance was 
large, he took nearly every bill. The no-money men, butter- 
egg folks; women who are talking-machines and work the 
threads of scandal ; paupers, walkers, drunk or dry, poor-house 
poets, no matter, the saying of Terence abided, — "I am a 
man, and nothing human but what can go down with me," 
Of such a one he says, "His face expressed no more curiosity 
or relationship to me than a custard pudding." Of such is 
the kingdom of poor relations. 

No man had a better unfinished life. His anticipations were 
vastly rich: more reading was to be done over Shakespeare 
and the Bible; more choice apple-trees to be set in uncounted 
springs, — for his chief principle was faith in all things, 
thoughts, and times, and he expected, as he said, "to live for 
forty years." He loved hard manual work, and did not mean 
to move every year, like certain literary brethren. In his busi- 
ness of surveying he was measurably diligent, and having en- 
tered on a plan would grind his vest away over the desk to 
have done with it. He laid out every molecule of fidelity upon 
his employer's interests, and in setting a pine-lot for one says, 
"/ set every tree with my own hands.'''' Yet like moralists, 
though he tried to "pay every debt as if God wrote the bill," 
as Emerson says,, he takes himself to task: "I remember with 
a pang the past spring and summer thus far. I have not been 
an early riser: society seems to have invaded and overrun me." 

[ 333 ] 



THOREAU 

Thus intensely he endeavored to live, but living is not all. 
He had now more than attained the middle age, his health 
sound to all appearance, his plans growing more complete, 
more cherished; new lists of birds and flowers projected, new 
details to be gathered upon trees and plants. Now, embarking 
more closely in the details of this human enterprise which 
had been something miscellaneous, the time had fairly come 
to take an account of stock, and to know how he really stood 
on terra Jirma. Here was a great beginning, in a condition of 
matchless incompleteness, — to be adjusted by no one but the 
owner. In December, 1860, he took a severe cold by exposing 
himself while counting the rings on trees and when there was 
snow on the ground. This brought on a bronchial affection, 
which he much increased by lecturing at Waterbury; and al- 
though he used prudence after this, and indeed went a-jour- 
neying with his friend, Horace Mann, Jr., into Minnesota, 
this trouble with the bronchiae continued. 

Early in his illness Thoreau began a letter to Ricketson 
(March 19, 1861), for which he substituted a very different 
one three days later, — using only the first few lines of this, 
and substituting an account of his own sickness for that of 
the Minotts. This first draft runs thus: — 

^^ Friend R. 

Your letter reached me in due time, hut I had already heard 
the blue-birds. They were here on the 26 of Feb. at least, — btit 
not yet do the larks sing or the JlicTiers call, with us. The blue 
birds come again, as does the same spring, but it does not find 

[ 334 ] 



MORAL 

the same mortals here to greet it. You remember Minotfs cottage 
on the hillside, — laell, it finds some change there, Jbr instance. 
The little gray, hip-roofed cottage was occupied at the beginning 
of February, this year, by Geoige Minott and his sister Mary, 
respectively 78 and 80 years old, — and Miss Potter, 7^. These 
had been its permanent occupants Jbr many years. Minott had 
been on his last legs Jbr some time, — at last off his legs, expect- 
ing weeMy to take his departure, — a burden to himself and 
Jriends, — yet dry and natural as ever. His sister took care of 
him, and supported herself and family with her needle, as u^ual. 
He lately willed his little property to her, as a slight compensa- 
tion Jbr her care. Feb. 13, their sister, 86 or 87, xoho lived across 
the way, died. Miss Minott had taken cold in visiting her, and 
was so sick that she cotdd not go to her funeral. She herself 
died of lung fever on the 18th, (which was said to be the same 
disease that her sister had), — having just willed her property 
back to George, and added her own mite to it. Miss Potter, too, 
had noto become ill, — too ill to attend the funeral, — and she 
died of the same disease on the 23rd. All departed as gently as 
the sun goes down, leaving George alone. 

I called to see him the other day, — the 27th of February, — 
a remarkably pleasant spring day, — aiid as I was climbing the 
sunny slope to his strangely deserted house, I heard the Jirst 
blue birds upon the elm that hangs over it. They had come as 
usual, though some who used to hear them were gone. Even 
Minott had 7iot heard them, thoiigh the door was open, — -for he 
was thinking of other things. Perhaps there will be a time when 
the blue birds themselves will not return any more. 

[ 335 ] 



THOREAU 

/ hear that George, sitting on the side of his bed, a few days 
after this, called out to his niece, who had come to take care of 
him, and was in the next room, — to know if she did not feel 
lonely? ^Yes, I do'' said she. 'So do P added he. He said he 
was like an old oak, all shattered and decaying. '/ am sivre. 
Uncle ^ said his niece, 'you are not much like an oak.'' 'I mean'' 
said he, ' that I am like an oak or any other tree, inasmuch as 
I cannot stir from where I am.''"''' 

Here the draft ends; and when Thoreau took up the sub- 
ject again, March 22, he gave the date of his "severe cold," 
from which he never recovered, as December 3, 1860. 

With an unfaltering trust in God's mercies and never de- 
serted by his good genius, he most bravely and unsparingly 
passed down the inclined plane of a terrible malady, pulmo- 
nary consumption, working steadily at the completing of his 
papers to his last hours, or so long as he could hold the pen- 
cil in his trembling fingers. Yet, if he did get a little sleep to 
comfort him in this year''s campaign of sleepless affliction, he 
was sure to interest those about him with his singular dreams, 
more than usually fantastic : he said once that, having got a 
few moments of repose, "sleep seemed to hang round my bed 
in festoons." The last sentence he incompletely spoke con- 
tained but two distinct words, "moose" and "Indians," show- 
ing how fixed in his mind was that relation. Then the world 
he had so long sung and delighted in faded tranquilly away 
from his eyes and hearing, till on that beautiful spring morn- 
ing of May 6, 1862, it closed on him. He had written long 

before: — 

[ 336 ] 



MORAL 

''In this roadstead I have ridden, 
In this covert I have hidden. 
Friendly thoughts were cliffs to me. 
And I hid beneath their lea. 

This true people took the stranger. 
And warm-hearted housed the ranger; 
They received their roving guest. 
And have fed him with the best ; 

Whatsoe'er the land afforded 
To the stranger's wish accorded. 
Shook the olive, stripped the vine. 
And expressed the strengthening wine. 

And by night they did spread o'er him 
What by day they spread before him. 
That good-will which was repast 
Was his covering at last." 

His state of mind during this, his only decided illness, de- 
serves notice as in part an idiosyncrasy. He accepted it heroi- 
cally, but in no wise after the traditional manner. He experi- 
enced that form of living death when the very body refuses 
sleep, such is its deplorable dependence on the lungs now 
slowly consumed by atoms; in its utmost terrors refusing aid 
from any opiate in causing slumber, and declaring uniformly 
that he preferred to endure with a clear mind the worst penal- 
ties of suffering, rather than be plunged in a turbid dream by 
narcotics. He retired into his inner mind, into that unknown, 
unconscious, profound world of existence where he excelled; 
there he held inscrutable converse with just men made per- 

[ 337 ] 



THOREAU 

feet, or what else, absorbed in himself. "The night of time 
far surpasses the day; and who knows when was the equinox? 
Every hour adds unto the current arithmetic, which scarce 
stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of 
life; since our longest sun sets on right declensions, and makes 
but winter arches, therefore it cannot be long before we lie 
down in darkness and have our light in ashes. Sense endureth 
no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves: our de- 
livered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our 
sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions."" An in- 
effable reserve shrouded this to him unforeseen fatality: he 
had never reason to believe in what he could not appreciate, 
nor accepted formulas of mere opinions; the special vitaliza- 
tion of all his beliefs, self-consciously, lying in the marrow of 
his theology. 

As noticed, he had that forecast of life which by no means 
fulfils its prediction deliberately; else why are these mortal 
roads on which we so predictively travel strewn with the 
ashes of the young and fair, — this Appian Way devised in 
its tombs, — from the confidence of the forty years to come.? 
^'■Quisque suos patimur manes, — we have all our infirmities 
first or last, more or less. There will be, peradventure, in an 
age, or one of a thousand, a Pollio Romulus, that can pre- 
serve himself with wine and oil; a man as healthy as Otto 
Hervardus, a senator of Augsburg in Germany, whom Leovi- 
tius, the astrologer, brings in for an example and instance of 
certainty in his art; who, because he had the significators in 
his geniture fortunate, and free from the hostile aspects of 

[ 338 ] 



MORAL 

Saturn and Mars, — being a very cold man, — could not re- 
member that ever he was sick."" The wasting away of his body, 
the going forth and exit of his lungs, which, like a steady 
lamp, give heat to the frame, was to Henry an inexplicably 
foreign event, the labors of another party in which he had no 
hand; though he still credited the fact to a lofty inspiration. 
He would often say that we could look on ourselves as a third 
person, and that he could perceive at times that he was out 
of his mind. Words could no longer express these inexplicable 
conditions of his existence, this sickness which reminded him 
of nothing that went before: such as that dream he had of 
being a railroad cut, where they were digging through and 
laying down the rails, — the place being in his lungs. 

His habit of engrossing his thoughts in a journal, which 
had lasted for a quarter of a century ; his out-of-door life, of 
which he used to say, if he omitted that, all his living ceased, 
— all this now became so incontrovertibly a thing of the past 
that he said to me once, standing at the window, "I cannot 
see on the outside at all. We thought ourselves great philoso- 
phers in those wet days, when we used to go out and sit down 
by the wall-sides." This was absolutely all he was ever heard 
to say of that outward world during his illness ; neither could 
a stranger in the least infer that he had ever a friend in field 
or wood. Meanwhile, what was the consciousness in him, — 
what came to the surface .f^ Nothing save duty, duty, work, 
work! As Goethe said at the loss of his son, "It is now alone 
the idea of duty that must sustain us," Thoreau now concen- 
trated all his force, caught the shreds of his fleeting physical 

[ 339 ] 



THOREAU 

strength the moment when the destinies accorded to him a 
long breath, to complete his stories of the Maine Woods, 
then in press; endeavoring vainly to finish his lists of Birds 
and Flowers, and arrange his papers on Night and Moonlight. 
Never at any time at all communicative as to his own physi- 
cal condition (having caught that Indian trick of superlative 
reticence), he calmly bore the fatal torture, this dying at the 
stake, and was torn limb from limb in silence: — 

"When all this frame 
Is but one dramme, and what thou now descriest 
In sev'rall parts shall want a name." 

His patience was unfailing : assuredly he knew not aught 
save resignation ; he did mightily cheer and console those whose 
strength was less. His every instant now, his least thought 
and work, sacredly belonged to them, dearer than his rapidly 
perishing life, whom he should so quickly leave behind. As 
long as he could possibly sit up, he insisted on his chair at 
the family-table, and said, "It would not be social to take my 
meals alone."" And on hearing an organ in the streets, playing 
some old tune of his childhood he should never hear again, 
the tears fell from his eyes, and he said, "Give him some 
money! give him some money!" 

"He was retired as noontide dew. 
Or fountain in a noon-day grove ; 
And you must love him, ere to you 
He would seem worthy of your love. 

The outward shows of sky and earth. 
Of hill and valley, he has viewed ; 
[ 340 ] 



MORAL 

And impulses of deeper birth 
Have come to him in solitude." 

His mortal ashes are laid in the Concord burying-ground. 
A lady^ on seeing this tranquil spot, and the humble stone 
under the pitch-pine tree, replied to one who wished for him 
a star y-pointing monument, "This village is his monument, 
covered with suitable inscriptions by himself."" 

Truth, audacity, force, were among Thoreau's mental char- 
acteristics, devoted to humble uses. His thoughts burned like 
flame, so earnest was his conviction. He was transported in- 
finitely beyond the regions of self when pursuing his objects, 
single-hearted, doing one thing at a time and doing that in 
the best way! Self-reliance shall serve for his motto, — 
''His cold eye truth and conduct scanned." 

His love of wildness was real. Whatever sport it was of 
Nature, this child of an old civilization, this Norman boy 
with the blue eyes and brown hair, held the Indian''s creed, 
and believed in the essential worth and integrity of plant and 
animal. This was a religion to him; to us, mythical. He spoke 
from a deeper conviction than ordinary, which enforced on 
him that sphere and rule of life he kept. So far an anchorite, 
a recluse, as never to seek popular ends, he was yet gifted 
with the ability and courage to be a captain of men. Heroism 
he possessed in its highest sense, — the will to use his means 
to his ends, and these the best. Inexplicable he was, if spon- 
taneous action and free genius are not transparent: as they 
cannot be to those who put aside the principles of being, as 

1 Elizabeth Hoar. , 
[ 341 ] 



THOREAU 

understood by himself, and adopt an estimate that confines 
all men to one spiteful code, — their own. 

As to his results, — possibly the future may determine that 
our village life, unknown and unnoticed, without name and 
influence in the present, was essential and vital, as were the 
realities he affected, the immutable truths he taught, — learned 
in the school of Nature. Endowed with unusual power and 
sagacity, if he did not shine in public councils, or lead the 
State, he yet defended the right, and was not the idle specta- 
tor of wrong and oppression. He showed that the private man 
can be a church and state and law unto himself. In a possible 
New England he may stand for the type of coming men, who 
shall invent new forms and truer modes of mortal society. 
His moral and critical estimates appear in his published writ- 
ings ; here I have united a few memorabilia of his general life, 
with passages not before published from his pen. 

His work was laid out for a long life; since the business he 
employed himself about required duration, before all others. 
To see him giving up all without a murmur, — so utterly re- 
signed to the wish of Heaven, even to die, if it must be so, 
rather than there should be any struggle in his existence 
against those beautiful laws he had so long worshipped and 
obeyed (whether consciously or not), — was enough to be de- 
scribed, if pen had the power to do it. For the most he did 
not realize his illness, — that is, did not make it real; but 
seemed to look on it as something apart from himself, in 
which he had no concern. "I have no wish to live, except for 
my mother and sister," was one of his conclusions. He wrote 

[ 342 ] 



MORAL 

for the press till his strength was no longer sufficient even to 
move a pencil; nevertheless he did not relax, but had the 
papers still laid before him. I am not aware that anywhere in 
literature there beams a greater heroism; the motive, too, was 
sacred, — for he was doing these things that his family might 
reap the advantage. 

One of his noblest and ablest associates was a philosopher, 
whose heart is like a land flowing with milk and honey ;^ and 
it was affecting to see this venerable man kissing his brow, 
when the damps and sweat of death lay upon it, even if Henry 
knew it not. It seemed to me an extreme unction, in which a 
friend was the best priest. 

1 Alcott. 



[ 343 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 



ILLUSTRATING CHIEFLY SCENES OF 
THOREAU'S LIFE 



TO HENRY 

WHITE POND 

A LAMENT 

MORRICE LAKE 

TEARS IN SPRING 

THE MILL BROOK 

STILLRIVER, THE WINTER WALK 

TRURO 

BAKER FARM 

FLIGHT OF GEESE 



MEMORIAL VERSES 
I 

TO HENRY 

Hear'st thou the sobbing breeze complain 
How faint the sunbeams light the shore ? - 

Thy heart, more fixed than earth or main, 
Henry ! thy faithful heart is o'er. 

Oh, weep not thou thus vast a soul, 
Oh, do not mourn this lordly man. 

As long as Walden's waters roll. 
And Concord river fiUs a span. 

For thoughtful minds in Henry's page 
Large welcome find, and bless his verse, 

Drawn from the poet's heritage, 
From wells of right and nature's source. 

Fountains of hope and faith ! inspire 
Most stricken hearts to hft this cross ; 

His perfect trust shall keep the fire. 
His glorious peace disarm the loss ! 



II 

WHITE POND 

Gem of the wood and playmate of the sky, 

How glad on thee we rest a weary eye. 

When the late ploughman from the field goes home, 

And leaves us free thy solitudes to roam ! 

[ 347 ] 



THOREAU 

Thy sand the naiad gracefully had pressed, 
Thy proud majestic grove the nymph caressed, 
Who with cold Dian roamed thy virgin shade, 
And, clothed in chastity, the chase delayed, 
To the close ambush hastening at high noon, 
When the hot locust spins his Zendic rune. 

Here might ApoUo touch the soothing lyre, 

As through the darkening pines the day's low fire 

Sadly burns out ; or Venus nigh delay 

With young Adonis, while the moon's still ray 

Mellows the fading foliage, as the sky 

Throws her blue veil of twilight mystery. 

No Greece to-day ; no dryad haunts the road 
Where sun-burned farmers their poor cattle goad ; 
The black crow caws above yon steadfast pine. 
And soft Mitchella's odorous blooms entwine 
These mossy rocks, where piteous catbirds scream. 
And Redskins flicker through the white man's dream. 
Who haunts thy wood-path? — ne'er in summer pressed 
Save by the rabbit's foot ; its winding best 
Kept a sure secret, tiU the tracks, in snow 
Dressed for their sleds, the lumbering woodmen plough. 

How soft yon sunbeam paints the hoary trunk. 
How fine the glimmering leaves to shadow sunk ! 
Then streams across our grassy road the line 
Drawn firmly on the sward by the straight pine ; 
And curving swells in front our feet allure. 
While far behind the curving swells endure ; 
Silent, if half pervaded by the hum 
Of the contented cricket. Nature's sum 
Is infinite devotion. Days nor time 
She emulates, — nurse of a perfect prime. 
[ 348 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Herself the spell, free to all hearts ; the spring 
Of multiplied contentment, if the ring 
With which we 're darkly bound. 

The pleasant road 
Winds as if Beauty here familiar trode ; 
Her touch the devious curve persuasive laid, 
Her tranquil forethought each bright primrose stayed 
In its right nook. And where the glorious sky 
Shines in, and bathes the verdant canopy. 
The prospect smiles delighted, while the day 
Contemns the village street and white highway. 

Creature all beauteous ! In thy future state 
Let beauteous Thought a just contrivance date ; 
Let altars glance along thy lonely shore, 
Relumed ; and on thy leafy forest floor 
Tributes be strewn to some divinity 
Of cheerful mien and rural sanctity. 
Pilgrims might dancing troop their souls to heal ; 
Cordials, that now the shady coves conceal, 
Reft from thy crystal shelves, we should behold. 
And by their uses be thy charms controlled. 

Naught save the sallow herdsboy tempts the shore, 
His charge neglecting, while his feet explore 
Thy shallow margins, when the August flame 
Burns on thy edge and makes existence tame ; 
Naught save the blue king-fisher rattUng past, 
Or leaping fry that breaks his lengthened fast; 
Naught save the falling hues when Autumn's sigh 
Beguiles the maple to a sad reply ; 
Or some peculiar air a sapless leaf 
Guides o'er thy ocean by its compass brief. 

Save one, whom often here glad Nature found 
Seated beneath yon thorn, or on the ground 

[ 349 ] 



THOREAU 

Poring content, when frosty Autumn bore 
Of wilding fruit to earth that bitter store ; 
And when the building winter spanned in ice 
Thy trembling limbs, soft lake ! then each device 
Traced in white figures on thy seamed expanse 
This child of problems caught in gleeful trance. 

Oh, welcome he to thrush and various jay, 
And echoing veery, period of the day ! 
To each clear hyla triUing the new spring. 
And late gray goose buoyed on his icy wing ; 
Bold walnut-buds admire the gentle hand. 
While the shy sassafras their rings expand 
On his approach, and thy green forest wave, 
White Pond ! to him fraternal greetings gave. 
The far white clouds that fringe the topmost pine 
For his delight their fleecy folds decline ; 
The sunset worlds melted their ores for him. 
And lightning touched his thought to seraphim. 

Clear wave, thou wert not vainly made, I know, 
Since this sweet man of Nature thee could owe 
A genial hour, some hope that flies afar. 
And revelations from thy guiding star. 
Oh, may that muse, of purer ray, recount. 
White Pond ! thy glory ; and, while anthems mount 
In strains of splendor, rich as sky and air. 
Thy praise, my Henry, might those verses share. 
For He who made the lake made it for thee, 
So good and great, so humble, yet so free ; 
And waves and woods we cannot fairly prove, 
Like souls, descended from celestial Jove. 

With thee he is associate. Hence I love 
Thy gleams, White Pond ! thy dark, familiar grove ; 
[ 350 J 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Thy deep green shadows, clefts of pasture ground ; 

Mayhap a distant bleat the single sound, 

One distant cloud, the sailor of the sky. 

One voice, to which my inmost thoughts reply. 



Ill 
A LAMENT 

A WAIL for the dead and the dying ! 

They fall in the wind through the Gilead tree, 

Off the sunset's gold, off hill and sea ; 

They fall on the grave where thou art lying. 
Like a voice of woe, like a woman sighing. 

Moaning her buried, her broken love. 

Never more joy, — never on earth, never in heaven above ! 

Ah, me ! was it for this I came here? 
Christ! didst thou die that for this I might live? 

An anguish, a grief like the heart o'er the bier, — 
Grief that I cannot bury, nor against it can strive, — 
Life-long to haunt me, while breath brings to-morrow. 
Falling in spring and in winter, rain and sleet sorrow, 
Prest from my fate that its future ne'er teUeth, 
Spring from the unknown that ever more welleth. 

Fair, O my fields ! soft, too, your hours ! 
Mother of Earth, thou art pleasant to see ! 

I walk o'er thy sands, and I bend o'er thy flowers. 
There is nothing, O nothing, thou givest me. 
Nothing, O nothing, I take from thee. 
What are thy heavens, so blue and so fleeting? 
Storm, if I reck not, no echo meeting 
In this cold heart, that is dead to its beating. 
Caring for nothing, parting or greeting ! 

[351 ] 



THOREAU 
IV 

MORRICE LAKE 

(Written for E. 8. Hotham.) 

On Morrice Lake I saw the heron flit 
And the wild wood-duck from her summer perch 
Scale painted by, trim in her plumes, all joy ; 
And the old mottled frog repeat his bass, 
Song of our mother Earth, the child so dear. 
There, in the stillness of the forest's night. 
Naught but the interrupted sigh of the breeze. 
Or the far panther's cry, that, o'er the lake, 
Touched with its sudden irony and woke 
The sleeping shore ; and then I hear its crash. 
Its deep alarm-gun on the speechless night, — 
A falling tree, hymn of the centuries. 

No sadness haunts the happy lover's mind, 
On thy lone shores, thou anthem of the woods. 
Singing her calm reflections ; the tall pines. 
The sleeping hill-side and the distant sky, 
And thou ! the sweetest figure in the scene, 
Truest and best, the darling of my heart. 

O Thou, the ruler of these forest shades. 
And by thy inspiration who controll'st 
The wild tornado in its narrow path. 
And deck'st with fairy wavelets the small breeze. 
That Uke some lover's sigh entreats the lake ; 
O Thou, who in the shelter of these groves 
Build'st up the life of nature, as a truth 
Taught to dim shepherds on their star-lit plains, 
Outwatching midnight ; who in these deep shades 
[ 352 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Secur'st the bear and catamount a place, 

Safe from the glare of the infernal gun, 

And leav'st the finny race their pebbled home, 

Domed with thy watery simshine, as a mosque ; 

God of the solitudes ! kind to each thing 

That creeps or flies, or launches forth its webs, — 

Lord ! in thy mercies. Father ! in thy heart. 

Cherish thy wanderer in these sacred groves ; 

Thy spirit send as erst o'er Jordan's stream, 

Spirit and love and mercy for his needs. 

Console him with thy seasons as they pass. 

And with an unspent joy attune his soul 

To endless rapture. Be to him, — thyself 

Beyond all sensual things that please the eye. 

Locked in his inmost being ; let no dread. 

Nor storm with its wild splendors, nor the tomb. 

Nor all that human hearts can sear or scar. 

Or cold forgetfulness that withers hope, 

Or base undoing of all human love. 

Or those faint sneers that pride and riches cast 

On unrewarded merit, — be, to him. 

Save as the echo from uncounted depths 

Of an unfathomable past, burying 

All present griefs. 

Be merciful, be kind ! 
Has he not striven, true and pure of heart. 
Trusting in thee? Oh, falter not, my child! 
Great store of recompense thy future holds. 
Thy love's sweet councils and those faithful hearts 
Never to be estranged, that know thy worth. 



[ 353 



THOREAU 
V 

TEARS IN SPRING 

The swallow is flying over, 

But he will not come to me ; 

He flits, ray daring rover. 

From land to land, from sea to sea ; 

Where hot Bermuda's reef 

Its barrier lifts to fortify the shore. 

Above the surfs wild roar 

He darts as swiftly o'er, — 

But he who heard that cry of spring 

Hears that no more, heeds not his wing. 

How bright the skies that dally 

Along day's cheerful arch. 

And paint the sunset valley ! 

How redly buds the larch ! 

Blackbirds are singing. 

Clear hylas ringing. 

Over the meadow the frogs proclaim 

The coming of Spring to boy and dame. 

But not to me, — 

Nor thee ! 

And golden crowfoot 's shining near. 
Spring everywhere that shoots 't is clear, 
A wail in the wind is all I hear ; 
A voice of woe for a lover's loss, 
A motto for a travelling cross, — 
And yet it is mean to mourn for thee, 
In the form of bird or blossom or bee. 

[ 354 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Cold are the sods of the valley to-day 

Where thou art sleeping, 

That took thee back to thy native clay ; 

Cold, — if above thee the grass is peeping 

And the patient sunlight creeping. 

While the bluebird sits on the locust-bough 

Whose shadow is painted across thy brow. 

And carols his welcome so sad and sweet 

To the Spring that comes and kisses his feet. 



VI 

THE MILL BROOKi 

The cobwebs close are pencils of meal. 

Painting the beams unsound, 
And the bubbles varnish the glittering wheel 

As it rumbles round and round. 
Then the Brook began to talk 

And the water found a tongue, 
"We have danced a long dance," said the gossip, 

"A long way have we danced and sung." 

"Rocked in a cradle of sanded stone 

Our waters wavered ages alone. 

Then glittered at the spring 

On whose banks the feather-ferns cling ; 

Down jagged ravines 

We fled tortured. 

And our wild eddies nurtured 

Their black hemlock screens ; 

And o'er the soft meadows we rippled along. 

And soothed their lone hours with a pensive song, — 

1 One of the most labored pieces lever wrote. But it was not helped by work. W. E. C. 

[ 355 ] 



THOREAU 

Now at this mill we 're plagued to stop, 
To let our miller grind the crop. 

"See the clumsy farmers come 

With jolting wagons far from home ; 

We grind their grist, 

It wearied a season to raise, 

Weeks of sunlight and weeks of mist. 

Days for the drudge and Holydays. 

To me it fatal seems. 

Thus to kill a splendid summer. 

And cover a landscape of dreams 

In the acre of work and not murmur. 

I could lead them where berries grew. 

Sweet flag-root and gentian blue. 

And they will not come and laugh with me. 

Where my water sings in its joyful glee ; 

Yet small the profit, and short-lived for them. 

Blown from Fate's whistle like flecks of steam. 

"The old mill counts a few short years, — 

Ever my rushing water steers ! 

It glazed the starving Indian's red, 

On despair or pumpkin fed. 

And oceans of turtle notched ere he came, 

Species consumptive to Latin and fame, 

(Molluscous dear or orphan fry. 

Sweet to Nature, I know not why). 

"Thoughtful critics say that I 
From yon mill-dam draw supply. — 
I cap the scornful Alpine heads, 
Amazons and seas have beds. 
But I am their trust and lord. 
Me ye quaif by bank and board, 

[ 356 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Me ye pledge the iron-horse, 
I float Lowells in my source. 

"The farmers lug their bags and say, — 
'Neighbor, wilt thou grind the grist to-day?' 
Grind it with his nervous thumbs ! 
Clap his aching shells behind it. 
Crush it into crumbs ! 

"No ! his dashboards from the wood 
Hum the dark pine's solitude ; 
Fractious teeth are of the quarry 
That I crumble in a hurry, — 
Far-fetched duty is to me 
To turn this old wheel carved of a tree. 

"I Uke the maples on my side. 

Dead leaves, the darting trout ; 

Laconic rocks (they sometime put me out) 

And moon or stars that ramble with my tide; 

The polished air, I think I could abide. 

"This selfish race who prove me, 

Who use, but do not love me ! 

Their undigested meal 

Pays not my labor on the wheel. 

I better like the sparrow 

Who sips a drop at morn, 

Than the men who vex my marrow. 

To grind their cobs and corn." 

Then said I to my brook, "Thy manners mend! 
Thou art a tax on earth for me to spend." 



[ 357 ] 



T H O R E A U 

VII 

STILLRIVER, THE WINTER WALKl 

The busy city or the heated car. 

The unthinking crowd, the depot's deafening jar. 

These me befit not, but the snow-clad hiU 

From whose white steeps the rushing torrents fill 

Their pebbly beds, and as I look content 

At the red Farmhouse to the summit lent. 

There, — underneath that hospitable elm. 

The broad ancestral tree, that is the helm 

To sheltered hearts, — not idly ask in vain, 

Why was I born, — the heritage of pain? 

The gliding trains desert the slippery road, 

The weary drovers wade to their abode ; 

I hear the factory bell, the cheerful peal 

That drags cheap toil from many a hurried meal. 

How dazzling on the hill-side shines the crust, 

A sheen of glory unprofaned by dust ! 

And where thy wave, Stillriver, glides along, 

A stream of Helicon unknown in song. 

The pensive rocks are wreathed in snow-drifts high 

That glance through thy soft tones hke witchery. 

To Fancy we are sometimes company. 

And Solitude 's the friendliest face we see. 

Some serious village slowly through I pace. 

No form of all its life mine own to trace ; 

Where the cross mastiff growls with blood-shot eye. 

And barks and growls and waits courageously ; 

Its peaceful mansions my desire allure 

1 From Groton Junction (now Ayer) to Lancaster along the railroad. 

[ 358 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Not each to enter and its fate endure, — 

But Fancy fills the window with its guest ; 

The laughing maid, — her swain who breaks the jest; 

The solemn spinster staring at the fire, 

Slow fumbling for his pipe, her solemn sire ; 

The loud-voiced parson, fat with holy cheer. 

The butcher ruddy as the atmosphere ; 

The shop-boy loitering with his parcels dull, 

The rosy school-girls of enchantment full. 

Away from these the solitary farm 
Has for the mind a strange domestic charm. 
On some keen winter morning when the snow 
Heaps roof and casement, lane and meadow through. 
Yet in those walls how many a heart is beating. 
What spells of joy, of sorrow, there are meeting! 
One dreads the post, as much the next, delay. 
Lest precious tidings perish on their way. 
The graceful Julia sorrows to refuse 
Her teacher's mandate, while the boy let loose 
Drags out his sled to coast the tumbling hill. 
Whence from the topmost height to the low rill, 
Shot like an arrow from the Indian's bow. 
Downward he bursts, life, limb, and all below 
The maddening joy his dangerous impulse gives; 
In age, how slow the crazy fact revives ! 

Afar I track the railroad's gradual bend, 
I feel the distance, feel the silence lend 
A far romantic charm to farmhouse still. 
And spurn the road that plods the weary hill, — 
When like an avalanche the thundering car 
Whirls past, while bank and rail deplore the jar. 
The wildly piercing whistle through my ear 
Tells me I fright the anxious engineer ; 

[ 359 ] 



THOREAU 

I turn, — the distant train and hurrying bell 
Of the far crossing and its dangers tell. 
And yet upon the hill-side sleeps the farm, 
Nor maid or man or boy to break the charm. 

Delightful Girl ! youth in that farmhouse old, 

The tender darling in the tender fold, — 

Thy promised hopes fulfilled as Nature sought. 

With days and years, the income of thy thought ; 

Sweet and ne'er cloying, beautiful yet free. 

Of truth the best, of utter constancy ; 

Thy cheek whose blush the mountain wind laid on. 

Thy mouth whose lips were rosebuds in the sun ; 

Thy bending neck, the graces of thy form, 

Where art could heighten, but ne'er spoil the charm ; 

Pride of the village school for thy pure word. 

Thy pearls alone those glistening sounds alFord ; 

Sure in devotion, guileless and content. 

The old farmhouse is thy right element. 

Constance ! such maids as thou delight the eye. 

In all the Nashua's vales that roimd me lie ! 

And thus thy brother was the man no less, — 

Bred of the fields and with the wind's impress. 

With hand as open as his heart was free. 

Of strength half-fabled mixed with dignity. 

Kind as a boy, he petted dog and hen. 

Coaxed his slow steers, nor scared the crested wren. 

And not far off the spicy farming sage, 

Twisted with heat and cold, and cramped with age. 

Who grimts at all the sunlight through the year 

And springs from bed each morning with a cheer. 

Of all his neighbors he can something tell, — 

'T is bad, whate'er, we know, and like it well ! — 

[ 360 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

The bluebird's song he hears the first in spring. 
Shoots the last goose bound South on freezing wing. 

Ploughed and unploughed the fields look all the same, 

White as the youth's first love or ancient's fame ; 

Alone the chopper's axe awakes the hills. 

And echoing snap the ice-encumbered rills ; 

Deep in the snow he wields the shining tool. 

Nor dreads the icy blast, himself as cool. 

Seek not the parlor, nor the den of state 

For heroes brave ; make up thy estimate 

From these tough bumpkins clad in country mail. 

Free as their air and full without detail. 

No gothic arch our shingle Paestum boasts, — 
Its pine cathedral is the style of posts, — 
No crumbling abbey draws the tourist there 
To trace through ivied windows pictures rare, 
Nor the first village squire allows his name 
From aught illustrious or debauched by fame. 

That sponge profane who drains away the bar 
Of yon poor inn extracts the mob's huzza ; 
Conscious of morals lofty as their own. 
The glorious Democrat, — his life a loan. 
And mark the preacher nodding o'er the creed. 
With wooden text, his heart too soft to bleed. 
The iEsculapius of this httle State, 
A typhus-sage, sugars his pills in fate. 
Buries three patients to adorn his gig. 
Buys foundered dobbins or consumptive pig ; 
His wealthy pets he kindly thins away. 
Gets in their wills, — and ends them in a day. 
Nor shall the strong schoolmaster be forgot. 
With fatal eye, who boils the grammar-pot ; 

[ 36X ] 



THOREAU 

Blessed with large arms he deals contusions round, 
While even himself his awful hits confound. 

Pregnant the hour when at the tailor's store, 
Some dusty Bob a mail bangs through the door. 
Sleek with good living, virtuous as the Jews, 
The village squires look wise, desire the news. 
The paper come, one reads the falsehood there, 
A trial lawyer, lank-jawed as despair. 
Here, too, the small oblivious deacon sits. 
Once gross with proverbs, now devoid of wits, 
And still by courtesy he feebly moans. 
Threadbare injunctions in more threadbare tones. 
Sly yet demure, the eager babes crowd in, 
Pretty as angels, ripe in pretty sin. 
And the postmaster, suction-hose from birth. 
The hardest and the tightest screw on earth ; 
His price as pungent as his hyson green. 
His measure heavy on the scale of lean. 

A truce to these aspersions, as I see 
The winter's orb burn through yon leafless tree. 
Where far beneath the track Stillriver runs. 
And the vast hill-side makes a thousand suns. 
This crystal air, this soothing orange sky. 
Possess our lives with their rich sorcery. 
We thankful muse on that superior Power 
That with his splendor loads the sunset hour. 
And by the glimmering streams and solemn woods 
In glory walks and charms our solitudes. 

O'er the far intervale that dimly lies 

In snowy regions placid as the skies. 

Some northern breeze awakes the sleeping field. 

And like enchanted smoke the great drifts yield 

[ 362 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Their snowy curtains to the restless air ; 
Then build again for architect's despair 
The alabaster cornice or smooth scroll 
That the next moment in new forms unroll. 



VIII 
T 11 U K O 



Ten steps it lies from off the sea, 

Whose angry breakers score the sand, 
A valley of the sleeping land, 

Where chirps the cricket quietly. 

The aster's bloom, the copses' green, 
Grow darker in the softened sun. 
And silent here day's course is run, 

A sheltered spot that smiles serene. 

It reaches far from shore to shore. 
Nor house in sight, nor ship or wave, 
A silent valley sweet and grave, 

A refuge from the sea's wild roar. 

Nor gaze from yonder gravelly height, — 
Beneath, the crashing billows beat, 
The rolling surge of tempests meet 

The breakers in their awful might. — 

And inland birds soft warble here. 
Where golden-rods and yarrow shine. 
And cattle pasture — sparest kinc! 

A rural place for homestead dear. 

[ 3C3 ] 



THOREAU 

Go not then, traveller, nigh the shore ! 

In this soft valley muse content, 

Nor brave the cruel element, 
That thunders at the valley's door. 

And bless the little human dell. 

The sheltered copsewood snug and warm, - 
Retreat from yon funereal form, 

Nor tempt the booming surges' knell. 



II 
THE OLD WRECKER 

He muses slow along the shore, 
A stooping form, his wrinkled face 
Bronzed dark with storm, no softer grace 

Of hope ; old, even to the core. 

He heeds not ocean's wild lament, 
No breaking seas that sight appall, — 
The storms he likes, and as they fall 

His gaze grows eager, seaward bent. 

He grasps at all, e'en scraps of twine. 
None is too small, and if some ship 
Her bones beneath the breakers dip. 

He loiters on his sandy hne. 

Lonely as ocean is his mien, 
He sorrows not, nor questions fate. 
Unsought, is never desolate. 

Nor feels his lot, nor shifts the scene. 

Weary he drags the sinking beach. 
Undaunted by the cruel strife, 

[ 364 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Alive, yet not the thing of Ufe, 
A shipwrecked ghost that haunts the reach. 

He breathes the spoil of wreck and sea. 
No longer to himself belongs. 
Always within his ear thy songs. 

Unresting Ocean ! bound yet free. 

In hut and garden all the same. 

Cheerless and slow, beneath content, 
The miser of an element 

Without a heart, — that none can claim. 

Born for thy friend, O sullen wave. 

Clasping the earth where none may stand ! 
He clutches with a trembling hand 

The headstones from the sailor's grave. 



Ill 
OPEN OCEAN 

Unceasing roll the deep green waves, 
And crash their cannon down the sand. 
The tyrants of the patient land. 

Where mariners hope not for graves. 

The purple kelp waves to and fro. 

The white gulls, curving, scream along; 
They fear not thy funereal song. 

Nor the long surf that combs to snow. 

The hurrying foam deserts the sand, 
Afar the low clouds sadly hang. 
But the high sea with sullen clang. 

Still rages for the silent land. 

[ 365 ] 



THOREAU 

No human hope or love hast thou, 

Unfeeling Ocean ! in thy might, 

Away — I fly the awful sight, 
The working of that moody brow. 

The placid sun of autumn shines, — 
The hurrying knell marks no decline, 
The rush of waves, the war of brine. 

Force all, and grandeur, in thy lines. 

Could the lone sand-bird once enjoy 
Some mossy deU, some rippling brooks. 
The fruitful scent of orchard nooks, 

The loved retreat of maid or boy ! 

No, no ; the curhng billows green. 
The cruel surf, the drifting sand, 
No flowers or grassy meadow-land. 

No kiss of seasons linked between. 

The mighty roar, the burdened soul, 
The war of waters more and more. 
The waves, with crested foam-wreaths hoar. 

Rolling to-day, and on to roll. 



I V 
WINDMILL ON THE COAST 

With wreck of ships, and drifting plank. 
Uncouth and cumbrous, wert thou built, 
Spoil of the sea's unfathomed guilt. 

Whose dark revenges thou hast drank. 

And loads thy sail the lonely wdnd. 
That wafts the sailor o'er the deep, 

[ 366 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Compels thy rushing arms to sweep. 
And earth's dull harvesting to grind. 

Here strides the fisher lass and brings 
Her heavy sack, while creatures small. 
Loaded with bag and pail, recall 

The youthful joy that works in things. 

The winds grind out the bread of life. 
The ceaseless breeze torments the stone, 
The mill yet hears the ocean's moan. 

Her beams the refuse of that strife. 



ETE RN AL SEA 

I hear the distant tolling bell. 
The echo of the breathless sea ; 
Bound in a human sympathy 

Those sullen strokes no tidings tell. 

The spotted sea-bird skims along. 
And fisher-boats dash proudly by ; 
I hear alone that savage cry. 

That endless and unfeeling song. 

Within thee beats no answering heart. 
Cold and deceitful to my race, 
The skies alone adorn with grace 

Thy freezing waves, or touch with art. 

And man must fade, but thou shalt roll 
Deserted, vast, and yet more grand ; 
While thy cold surges beat the strand. 

Thy funeral bells ne'er cease to toll. 

[ 367 ] 



THOREAU 

VI 
MICHEL ANGELO AN INCIDENT 

Hard by the shore the cottage stands, 
A desert spot, a fisher's house, 
There could a hermit keep carouse 

On turnip-sprouts from barren sands. 

No church or statue greets the view, 
Not Pisa's tower or Rome's high wall ; 
And connoisseurs may vainly call 

For Berghem's goat, or Breughel's blue. 

Yet meets the eye along a shed, 
Blazing with golden splendors rare, 
A name to many souls Uke prayer, 

Robbed from a hero of the dead. 

It glittered far, the splendid name, 
Thy letters, Michel Angelo, — 
In this lone spot none e'er can know 

The thrills of joy that o'er me came. 

Some bark that slid along the main 

Dropped off her headboard, and the sea 
Plunging it landwards, in the lee 

Of these high cliffs it took the lane. 

But ne'er that famous Florentine 
Had dreamed of such a fate as this. 
Where tolling seas his name may kiss, 

And curls the lonely sand-strewn brine. 

These fearless waves, this mighty sea, 
Old Michel, bravely bear thy name ! 
Like thee, no rules can render tame. 

Fatal and grand and sure like thee. 

[ 368 J 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

VII 
OLD OCEAN 

Of what thou dost, I think, not art. 
Thy sparkling air and matchless force, 
Untouched in thy own wild resource, 

The tide of a superior heart. 

No human love beats warm below. 

Great monarch of the weltering waste ! 
The fisher-boats make sail and haste, 

Thou art their savior and their foe. 

Alone the breeze thy rival proves, 

Smoothing o'er thee his graceful hand, 
Lord of that empire over land. 

He moves thy hatred and thy loves. 

Yet thy unwearied plunging swell. 

Still breaking, charms the sandy reach. 
No dweller on the shifting beach. 

No auditor of thy deep knell ; — 

The sunny wave, a soft caress ; 

The gleaming ebb, the parting day ; 

The waves like tender buds in May, 
A fit retreat for blessedness. 

And breathed a sigh like children's prayers. 

Across thy light aerial blue. 

That might have softened wretches too, 
Until they dallied with these airs. 

Was there no flitting to thy mood? 

Was all this bliss and love to last? 

No lighthouse by thy stormy past, 
No graveyard in thy solitude ! 

[ 369 ] 



THOREAU 

IX 
BAKER FARMi 

Thy entry is a pleasant field, 
Which some mossy fruit-trees yield 
Partly to a ruddy brook, 
By gliding musquash undertook, 
And the small, mercurial trout 
That dart about. 

Cell of seclusion. 

Haunt of old Time ! 

Rid of confusion, 

Vacant of crime ; 

Landscape where the richest element 

Is a little sunshine innocent : 

In thy insidious marsh. 

In thy ancestral wood. 

Thy artless meadow 

And forked orchard's writhing mood, — 

O Baker Farm ! 

There lies in thee a fourfold charm. 

Alien art thou to God and Devil ! 
Man too forsaketh thee ; 
No one runs to revel 
On thy rail-fenced lea. 
Save gleaning Silence bearded gray. 
Who frozen apples steals away. 
Thinnest jars of Winter's jam. 
Which he '11 with gipsy sugar cram. 

1 In ISIS, when this poem teas written, the retreat here celebrated was a most retired spot, the out- 
lands on Fairhaven Bay of James Baker's large farm in Lincoln, two miles southeast of Concord 
Village, and a mile or so from Thoreau's Cove arid cabin, then standing and but lately deserted 
by Henry. It is now the frontage of C. F. Adams's villa. F. B. S., 1902. 



[ 370 J 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Thou art expunged from To-day, 

Rigid in parks of thine own, 

Where soberly shifts the play. 

As the wind sighs a monotone ; 

But west trends blue Fairhaven Bay, 

Green o'er whose rocks the white pines sway ; 

And south slopes Nobscot grand, 

And north our still CUfFs stand. 

And here a Poet builded 
In the completed years ; 
Behold a trivial cabin 
That to destruction steers ! 
Should we judge it built? 
Rather by kind Nature spilt ; 
Henry, with his alphabet 
Of the Past, this task could set. 

Pan of unwrinkled cream. 

May some Poet dash thee in his churn ! 

And with thy beauty mad. 

Verse thee in rhymes that burn ! 

Railroad defier. 

No man's desire ; 

Unspeculative place. 

With that demurest face. 

How long art thou to be 

Absolute in thy degree? 

I would hint at thy religion, 

Hadst thou any, — 

Piny fastness of the pigeon, 

Squirrel's litany ! 

Here the cawing, sable rook 

[ 371 ] 



THOREAU 

Never thumbed a gilt Prayer-Book 
In this ante-Christian nook : 
Set a priest at praying here, 
He would go to sleep I fear. 

Art thou orphaned of a deed, 

Or title that a court could read? 

Or dost thou stand 

For that entertaining land 

That no man owns. 

Pure grass and stones. 

In thy drying field, 

And thy knotty trees, 

In hassock and bield. 

And marshes that freeze? 

Simpleness is all thy teaching; 
Idleness is all the preaching. 
Churches are these steepled woods. 
Galleries these green solitudes. 
Fretted never by a noise, — 
Eloquence that each enjoys. 
Debate with none hast thou, 
With questions ne'er perplexed ; 
As tame at the first sight as now. 
In thy plain russet gaberdine drest. 

Come ye who love. 

And ye who hate ! 

Children of the Holy Dove, 

And Guy Faux of the State ; 

Come, hang conspiracies 

From the tough rafters of the trees ! 

One at a time, — 

That is enough ; 

[ 372 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Two will not rhyme. 
But make the roadway rough ; 

One at a time. 

With interspace sublime, — 
Before each of you go 

A century or so ! 

Still Baker Farm ! 

So fair a lesson thou dost set. 

With loving eyes 

Commensurately wise, — 
Lesson no one may forget. 
Consistent sanctity, — 
Value that can ne'er be spent. 
Volume that cannot be lent ; 

Passable to thee. 

And me, — 
For Heaven thou art meant ! 



X 

FLIGHT OF GEESEl 

Rambling along the marshes 
On the bank of the Assabet, 
Sounding myself as to how it went, — 
Praying I might not forget. 
And all uncertain 
Whether I was in the right, 
Toiling to lift Time's curtain, — 
And if I burnt the strongest light, — 

Written in 18l,S, but kept in manuscript for years by Emerson, as he told me, hoping to find 
he best word/or the honking cry of the wild goose, to use as a chorus to each stanza. At last he 
printed it in his "Parnassus." 



[ 373 ] 



THOREAU 

Suddenly, high in the air, 

I heard the travelled geese their overture prepare. 

High above the patent ball 

The wild geese flew ; 

Not half so wild as what doth me befall, 

Or, swollen Wisdom ! you. 

Th' indifferent geese 

Seemed to have taken the air on lease. 

In the front there fetched a leader, — 
Him behind the line spread out. 

And waved about ; 
For it was near night. 
When these air-pilots stop their flight. 

Southward went 

These geese indifferent, — 

South and south and south, — 

Steered by their indifference, — 

Slowly falling from their mouth 

A creaking sense ; 

Still they south would go. 

Leaving me in wonder at the show. 

From some Labrador lagoon 

They creaked along to the old tune. 

Cruising off the shoal dominion 

Where we sit, — 
Depending not on mere opinion, 

Nor hiving crumbs of wit. 
Geographical by tact. 
Naming not a pond or river ; 
Pulled with twilight down, in fact, 
In the reeds to quack and quiver, — 

There they go, 

[ 374 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

Spectators of the play below. 
Southward in a row. 

These indifferent geese 

Cannot stop to count the stars. 

Nor taste the sweetmeats in odd jars, 

Nor speculate and freeze. 
Raucous weasands needs be well. 
Feathers glossy, quills in order ; 
Starts their train, — yet rings no bell, — 
Steam is raised without recorder. 

"Up, ray merryraen, feathered all!" 
Saith the goose-commander ; 
"Brighten bills and flirt your pinions! 
My toes are nipt, — so let us render 
Ourselves into soft Campeachy ! 
'T is too cold in brisk Spitzbergen, 
And the waters are not leechy." 

"Flap your wings, my stiff companions ! 
Air-sailors ! clap your helm hard down ! 
Give one push, and we shall clatter 
Over river, wood, and town ! 
By our stomachs do we know 
Where we 'd best for supper go. 

"Let's brush loose for any creek 
Where lurk fish and fly ! 
Condiments to fat the weak 
Inundate the pie. 
Flutter not about a place. 
Ye concomitants of Space ! " 

Creak away ! 
Start well in advance of Day ! 
[ 375 ] 



THOREAU 

Creak and clatter as you go. 
Mortality sleeps sound below ! 
Mute shall listening nations stand 
On that dark, receding land ; 
Faint their villages and towns 
Scattered o'er the misty downs ; 
Named, divided, tethered cattle. 
Dulled by peace, and spilt in battle. 

As thus I stood, 

Much did it puzzle me ; 

And I was glued 

Speechless by this mystery ; 

How that thus from Labrador 

Screeching geese flew south so far, — 
How in the unfenced air 
They should so nimbly fare. 

Drawn along yearly in a narrow line, 

The midst of an experiment ? or the confine ? 

"How long?" 
Never is that question asked. 
While a throat can lift the song. 
Or a flapping wing be tasked. 
So long may be the feathered glee. 
These geese may touch from sea to sea. 

All the grandmothers about 

Hear these orators of Heaven ; 

Then clap on their flannels stout, 

Cowering o'er the hearth at even : 

Children stare up in the sky. 

And laugh to see the long black line on high. 

Was it all 
To make us laugh a little, 

[ 376 ] 



MEMORIAL VERSES 

They had drawn them round our ball, 
On their winglets brittle ? 

Year by year. 
As an airy joke to veer ? 

Then once more I heard them say, 
"'T is a smooth delightful road; 
Difficult to lose the way, 
And a trifle for a load. 
'T was our forte to pass for this ; 
Proper sack and sense to borrow ; 
Wings and legs, and bills that clatter. 
And the horizon of To-morrow." 



[ 377 ] 



INDEX 



INDEX 



[It will be evident to any reader that an index of this volume, to be complete, 
must run to many more pages than are here allowed. What is noic attempted 
«■ to give in the eight hundred and more titles, and more than three thousand 
page entries, the names of most authors mentioned, of towns, plants, etc., and 
a key to many of those expressions which these very original writers used. The 
totcns named are in Massachusetts unless othenoise indicated, f. b. s.] 



Abbey, Newstead, xix, 321 

Abbot (Abbas), vii 

Academies, 149, 160 

Academy, Concord, 7 

Achilles, 248 

Acorns, 12, 86, 102, 106, 120, 160 

Acton {the town), 135, 264 

Adams, C. F., 370 

Adams, James, 123 

Addison, 272 

Adolphus, Gustavus, 320 

Adonis, 348 

Adshed {Persian poet), 157 

Mlian, 61 

iEolian harp, 235, 274 

iEschylus, 49 

iEsculapius, 361 

Africa, 274 

After-math, 220 

Afternoon walks, 65, 127, 133, 149, 

214, 266, 305, 327, 358 
Agricola of Tacitus, 262 
Ajax Goodwin {fisherman), 11, 68, 

106 
Albion {hotel), 113 
Alcott, Bronson, ix, xvi, 146, 305, 

307, 309, 318, 322, 329, 343 
Alfieri, 10, 237 
Almanac, Farmers', 60 
Alms, 245 



Alpine, 263, 356 

Altars, 224, 349 

Amazon, 218 

America, 59, 90, 145, 188, 263, 299, 

308 
Amherst, N. H., 36 
Anacreon, 49 
Anakim {in art), 187 
Andromeda {the plant), 117, 282 
Andromeda Ponds, 281 
Andropogon, 68, 106 
Andrugio, 198 
Angelico, Fra, 169 
Angelo, Michel, 30, 147, 187, 368 
Ann, Cape, 118 
Anthony's corner, 104 
Antiquities, 60, 275 
Anti-slavery, 16, 241, 256, 261 
Antoninus, 18 
Anursnuc {the hill), 22, 144 
Apollo, 95, 348 
Appian Way, 338 
Apples, 7, 39, 77, 146, 195, 217, 

246-247, 272, 350, 370 
Appleton, T. G., 274 
Apple-tree, liO, 144, 185, 370 
April, 100, 104, 119, 123, 238, 277, 

300, 354 
Aquines, 246 
Arboretum, Loudon's, 275 



[ 381 ] 



THOREAU 



Arbors, 306, 310 

Arch, day's cheerful, 354 

Architecture, 188, 190, 240, 321, 

363 
Aristotle, 61 
Arnica mollis, 44 
Arrow, 111, 359 
Arrow-head, Indian, 95, 136, 264, 

271, 295 
Art and artists, vii, 187, 206, 301 
Art and Nature, 145, 184, 188, 

193 
Ash-tree, 141, 166 
Asia, mentioned, 25, 77 
Assabet {the river), 152, 172 
Aster, 122, 124, 155, 263, 363 
Aster Tradescanti, 101, 105, 289 
Astrochiton, 180 
Atheism, 90 
Athenaeum, Boston, 187 
Athenian, 307 
Athens, 56, 307 
Atlantic Monthly, x 
Atlantic Ocean, 329 
August, 22, 104, 106, 122, 173, 215, 

219, 294, 300, 349 
Augustine, St., 206 
Auk {the bird), 118 
Aurora, 72, 93 

Austerity of Thoreau, 32, 244, 311, 

329 
Authors quoted {see their names in 

this Index) 
Autumn, 93, 95, 104-106, 115-117, 

167, 181, 188, 193, 201, 204, 217, 

220, 285, 349, 366 
Autumnal aspects, 39, 272 
Awe, the cause of potato-rot, 89 
Axe, the chopper's, 242, 361 
Axe of Thoreau, 4, 271 

Ayer {the town), xvi, 358 



Bacchylides, quoted, 132 

Bailey {the poet), 156 

Bait for fish, 172 

Baker Farm, 124, 177, 370, 373 

Ballads, Robin Hood, 57, 275 

Balls, potato, 74 

Bank, 123, 136, 289 

Barberry, 23, 142, 167 

Barns, the farmers', 140, 190 

Barnstable {County), 252-253, 363- 

369 
Barrett's Hill {Nashawtuc), 144 
Bassi, Laura, quoted, vii 
Bayberry, 24, 289 
Bay, Fairhaven, 140 
Bay, Hudson's, 106 
Beach House, 36 
Beak of Caesar, 33 
Beans, 9, 93, 141, 261 
Beasts, 11, 150, 212 
Beaumont {the poet), 57 
Beauty, 34, 98, 102, 116, 135, 138, 

159, 187, 242, 302, 328 
Beaver Pond, 169 
Bedford {the town), 3, 251, 300 
Beech, 290 
Bees, 73, 77, 151, 154, 230, 265, 

354 
Beggars in Iran, 171 
Bell, the church, 239 
Bell, the factory, 358 
Ben Johnson, 28 {but see Jonson) 
Bentley, quoted, 304 
Berghem {painter), 368 
Bermoothes, 72 
Bermuda, 354 
Berries, 12, 22, 68, 71, 88, 99, 182, 

193, 222, 250, 278, 291-293, 356 
Bettine von Arnim, 310 
Bewick, Thomas, 280 
Bhagvat Gheeta, 50 



[ 382 ] 



INDEX 



Bible, 333 

Bidens Beckii, 106, 218 

Billerica {the town), 264 

Birch {the tree), 84, 107, 167, 250 

Birds, viii, 11, 58, 78, 88, 94, 96, 105, 

114, 144, 147-149, 155, 170, 184, 

192, 223, 239, 254, 277, 288, 296, 

300, 334, 335, 349, 350-354, 363, 

366, 371, 374-377 
Birkenhead, John {the poet), 57 
Bismiller, Rev., 203 
Bittern, 151, 169 
Blackberries, 216, 289 
Blake, Harrison, 44 
Blake, WiUiam, 213, 296 
Blanding turtle, 33, 281 
Blossom Day, 143 
Blueberries, 99 
Bluebirds, 78, 134, 137, 286, 334, 335, 

355, 361 
Boat, 8, 13, 34, 36, 119, 169, 209, 

266, 327, 367 
Bobolinks, 30, 96, 105, 147 
Boccaccio, 275 
Bombi/x pint, 211 
Book-cases, 9, 14 
Books of Thoreau, 38, 41, 49, 83, 

230, 232, 254-256, 260, 340 
Books read by Thoreau, 34, 49, 57- 

62, 229, 262, 275 
Boon nature, 191 
Borrow, George, 309 
Bose (a dog), 172 
Boston, mentioned, x, 4, 21, 36, 188, 

328 
Botany, 42, 61 

Boyhood of Thoreau, 5, 18, 108 
Brampton Hall, 25 
Brazil, 59 

Breadalbane, Lord, 134, 177 
Bream {the fish), 152, 219, 283, 299 

[ 383 ] 



Brighton {the town), 128 

Brilliana Harley, xx, 25 

Brooks {in Concord, mostly) : Berk- 
shire, 139 ; Clematis, 94, 142, 204; 
Farrar's, 94; Pantry, 170; San- 
guinetto, 124, 370 ; Saw-mill, 355; 
Second Division, 69, 133, 139„ 

Brown, John, of Kansas, 16, 241, 
256, 260-262 

Brown, Theo., 44 

Browne {the poet), 57 

Browne, Sir Thomas, quoted, 338 

Brownson, O. A., 32 

Bubbles, 97, 355 

Buds, V, 84, 113, 134, 350 

Buffon, quoted, 110 

Burns, Jeanie, 3 

Bushes, 78, 112, 267 

Buttercups, 293 

Butterflies, 73, 104, 127, 168, 265, 
313 

Buttrick, Abner, 301 

Byron {the poet), xix, 254 



Cabin, 75, 171, 371 

Cabin of Thoreau at Walden, 7, 

207, 230, 328 
Caddis-worm, 124 
Caesar, Julius, 33, 56, 178, 262 
Cairo, 20 
Calamint, 73 
Calendars of Thoreau, 67, 215, 

250 
California, 328 
CaUa, 290 

Cambridge {the city), 21, 49 
Campeachy, 375 
Camp, on Monadnoc, 42 
Camp, on Mount Washington, 44 
Canada, 75, 90, 173, 241, 248, 255, 

273 



THOREAU 



Candor of Thoreau, 8, 16, 19, 31, 119 

Canton {the town), 32 

Cape Ann, 118 

Cape Cod, 21, 35, 122, 252, 255, 271, 
363-369 

Cape Cod (the book), 9, 255 

Cape Cod Poems, xvi, 363 

Cardinal flowers, 106, 194 

Carew {the poet), 171 

Caribs, 59 

Carlisle {the town), 176, 251 

Carlyle, Thomas, mentioned, 50, 
58, 166, 255, 260 ; quoted, 198 

Carnac, 234 

Cassandra {the plant), 282 

Cat, 24, 298, 317, 329 

Catostomus Bostoniensis, 121, 298 

Catiline, 262 

Catkins, 286 

Catnep, 119 

Cato, 49, 60, 220 

Cattle, 103, 158, 175, 363, 376 

Caucasus, 116 

Cavaliers, 25 

Cell, 299 

Cellar, 7, 190, 240, 246 

Cemetery, Sleepy Hollow, xvi, 71, 
341, 355 

Cervantes, 309 

Channing, Doctor {uncle of Ellery 
Channing), 146, 156 

Channing, Ellery {William Ellery 
Channing, h. 1818, d. 1901) 
books of, x-xiv, 132 ; quoted, 146, 
148, 185, 187, 195, 207-209, 212, 
218-219, 223-224, 252-253, 267- 
270, 285-286, 292, 297-298, 322 
character of, xv, 66, 332 
his Life of Thoreau, ix, xi, xiii 
his Memorial Poems, x, xii, 345- 
377 



Channing, W. E. {continued) 
rambles with Emerson, Green, 
etc., 42, 66, 95, 118, 132, 140, 143- 
195, 241, 305-323, 328, 339, 350, 
358-363, 373 
Truro visits, 252, 271, 363 
his Walden poem, 207 
White Pond poem, 347 
walks and Country Walking, xiii, 
12, 35, 67, 132, 328, 370 

Chapman, George {the poet), 31, 
171, 231, 262 

Charlestown, Va., 241 

Chatterton {the poet), 210 

Chaucer, 50, 57, 82, 110, 275 

Chelmsford {the town), 4 

Chestnuts, 117, 182 

Chiam, Omar {Khayyam), 141 

China, 35, 104 

Chinese proverbs, 48, 225 

Cholmondeley, Thomas, 14, 50, 278 

Christ, 51, 60, 228, 351 

Christians, 25, 29, 137, 225, 301, 372 

Chrysostom {Alcott), 318-321 

Cicindela, 94, 265 

Cider, 9, 176, 321 

Cinque-foil, Norway, 74 

Cistuda, 281 

Cities, 20, 102, 160, 171, 276, 310, 
358 

Civilization, 159, 251, 315, 317 

Clam, 245 

Clam-sheU Bank, 136-137, 204 

Classics, 38, 49, 60, 89, 263, 307 

Claude Lorraine, xx 

Cleopatra, 170 

Clethra, 77, 293 

Cliff, Fairhaven, 22, 144, 251, 328, 
371 

Cliff, Lee's, 23, 24, 142 

Cliffs, Grape, 216 

[ 384 ] 



INDEX 



Clothes of Thoreau, 8, 33, 65 

Cob-money, 271 

Cocks, crowing of, 113, 245 

Cohosh (plant), 141 

Cohosh Swamp, 23, 217 

Coleridge (the poet), viii, 304 

Color, 98, 106, 153-154, 170, 184, 

251, 368 
Color of birds, 78, 89, 105, 144, 300 
Columella, 49, 60, 88 
Coming of Spring (poem), 285 
Communities, 309, 311 
Conantum {pasture district), 133, 

140-141, 159 
Concord (the town), 3, 7, 14, 21, 32, 

67, 76, 83, 133, 139, 144, 171, 200, 

222, 241, 270, 288, 317 
Concord jail, 273 
Concord River, 11, 13, 22, 65, 115, 

135, 141, 170, 218, 251, 264, 347 
Copan {in Concord), 23 
Coral, 72, 272 
Corner road, 125, 128 
Cottage, 87, 101 
Cotton, Charles, 54 
Country-Living (a poem), 297 
Country Walking, xiii, 132 
Cowper {the poet), 239 
Cows, 158, 293, 299, 309, 315, 349, 

370 
Crashaw (The Nativity), 138 
Crickets, 70, 77, 96, 101, 115, 117, 

251, 290, 294, 296, 368 
Crcesus, 120, 170 
Crows, 100, 348 
Cuckoo, 149 

Curzon's Mill {Newhuryport), 265 
Cutting's (a tavern), 146 

Dalgetty, Dugald, 320 
Dandelions, 216, 297 



Daniel {the poet), 52, 57 

Daniel {the prophet), 205 

Dante, mentioned, 17, 185, 235, 319 

Darwin, 221, 315 

Davenant {the poet), 2, 6, 49 

Davis, Jefferson, 261 

Days, 93, 97, 99, 104, 115, 123, 147, 

151, 184, 195, 215, 223, 237, 251, 

267, 293, 300, 331, 335 
Deacons, 32, 362 
Death, 19, 71, 210, 232, 253, 263, 

274, 284, 300, 335-336, 340, 343 
De Bry, 58, 249 
December, 11, 25, 99, 111, 184, 262, 

278, 334, 336, 350, 362 
Decker {the poet), 228 
Deep Cut, the, 77 
Deer, 234, 314 

Delay, The Poet's (poem), 239 
Demerara, 104 
Democrat, 145, 191, 265, 361 
Democratic Revieio, 255 
De Quincey, 229, 234 
Departure (poem of Thoreau), 337 
Destiny, 93, 137, 177, 187, 206 
Devil, the, 127, 265, 316 
Dial, The (magazine), 255, 259 
Diana {the moon), 70, 180, 348 
Dickens, Charles, 58 
Diet of Thoreau, 67 
Dionysus, 228 
Disease in general, 164 
Disease of Thoreau, 132, 334, 336- 

340 
Ditties sung by Thoreau, 41, 125 
Dogs, 20, 172, 175 
Domes, 101, 290 
Donne {the poet), 51, 53-54, 165, 

175, 203, 225, 230, 258, 272, 280, 

332, 340 
Don Quixote, 224, 308 

[ 385 J 



THOREAU 



Doors and door-stones, 141, 292 

Down of milkweed, 204-205 

Down of thistles, 154 

Downs, Mrs. Annie S., 270 

Drayton (the poet), 55 

Driftwood, 9, 14, 283 

Drummond (the poet), 55 

Dryads, 144, 266, 348 

Dryden {the poet), 186 

Ducks, 23, 210, 254, 286, 300, 352 

Duganne, 152, 203 

Dunstable {the town), 34 

Dutch toper, 85-86 

Duties of hfe, 16, 24, 49, 65, 86, 90, 

119, 164, 1T6, 191, 195, 200, 206, 

224, 318, 339 
Dying weeks of Thoreau, 336-343 

Earth, Mother, 95, 272, 284, 351- 

352 
Easterbrooks (colloquial), 23, 328 
Eastern sky, 93, 223-224, 251 
Ebba Hubbard, 159 
Edinburgh, 327 
Eels, 37 

Eggs of birds, 15, 68, 114, 293, 300 
Eggs of snakes, 211 
Eggs of turtles, 88, 281, 284, 288 
Egotism of Thoreau, 20, 119, 212, 

278, 328 
Egypt, 309 
Egyptian, 216, 234 
Eidolon {Alcott), 307-309, 319 
Emblems of Quarles, 53, 56 
Emerson, R. W., mentioned, vi, ix, 

xiii, 95, 124, 132-133, 166, 172, 

259, 328, 333, 373 , 

quoted in verse, 15, 64, 72, 82, 98, 
122, 125, 129, 141, 147, 150, 157- 
158, 162, 171, 178, 191-193, 221, 
244, 283, 341 



Emerson, R. W. {continued) 

quoted in prose, 134-135, 137, 141, 
143, 145-146, 153, 156-160, 165- 
167, 170-171, 177, 183, 187, 305 
Emerson, William, 49 
Endymion {Thoreau), 71 
England, 25, 134, 156, 159, 182, 188 
English, 38, 49, 83, 137, 167, 185, 

229, 254, 274, 306 
EngHshmen, 3, 14, 20, 25, 50, 61, 

167, 192, 288, 309 
Ennius, quoted, 316 
Epictetus, 11 
Esquimaux, 116, 186 
Estabrook country, 23, 328 
Eternity, 85, 90, 138 
Evelyn, 61 
Evening, 38, 55, 96, 99, 101, 115, 

187, 195, 219, 301, 331 
Everlasting {the flower), 182, 194 
Excellence of style, 38-39, 58, 85, 

87, 121, 188, 206, 213, 229, 234, 

242, 248, 254 
Excursions (the book), ix, 232, 255, 

272 

Fact-books, 50, Q5 

Faculties of men, 51, 85-86, 120, 

160, 177, 183, 207, 230, 330 
Fairhaven Bay {or Pond), 23-24, 

140, 251, 327 
Fairhaven Hill, 22, 100, 144, 328 
Faith, 52, 68, 101, 333 
Faith in God, 17, 89, 122, 200, 224, 

253, 301, 336, 347, 353 
FaUen leaves, 22, 105-106, 218, 266, 

284, 349 
Fame, 56, 57, 187, 206, 308, 361 
Family of Thoreau, 3, 5, 18, 24 
Farm, 43, 124, 145, 190, 359-360 
Farmer, Jacob, 68 



[ 386 ] 



INDEX 



Farmers of Concord, 9, 15, 31, 40, 

60, 69, 76, 88, 108, 159, 175, 189, 

191, 220 
Farmhouse, 93, 129, 140, 157, 187, 

190, 269, 358 
Farming life, 145, 173, 175, 177, 182, 

189, 242, 299, 360 
Farrar's Brook, 94 
Fate, 100, 157, 187, 206, 262, 305, 

330, 351, 356 
Faust, 184 
Favorite authors, 38, 50, 55, 61, 89, 

154-156, 171, 259, 275 
Feathers, 34, 105, 151, 158 
Features of Thoreau, 17, 33, 341 
February, 189, 265, 301, 334 
Ferns, 107, 294-295, 300 
Festus {Bailefs poem), 156-157, 228 
Fichte, quoted, 213 
Fields, 9, 38, 72, 104, 112, 125, 140, 

167, 173, 195, 215, 222, 237, 313, 

332, 339, 351, 361, 370, 372 
Fish, and fishing, 11, 36, 94, 106, 

115, 123, 136, 152, 172, 219, 282, 

298-299, 357, 375 
FitzwiUiara, N. H. {the town), 45 
Flakes of snow, 73, 112, 185 
Fletchers {the poets), 51-52, 228, 237 
Flint's Pond, 163, 169, 281 
Flowers, viii, 22, 42, 74, 98, 104, 128, 

139, 152, 155, 194, 214-215, 289, 

292-293, 348, 354, 363 
Flute-playing, 41 
Fools, 83, 85, 272, 275, 316 
Forbes, J. M., xiv 
Forest-brook, 285 
Forest Lake, 166 
Forest succession, 104, 256 
Formalist, 88, 120, 229 
Fortune, xv, 32, 54, 89, 120, 132, 

150, 178, 191, 198, 212, 244, 297 



Fox, C. J., of Nashua, 34 

Foxes, 296 

Fox River, 281 

Framingham {the town), 144-145 

France, mentioned, 4, 182, 306 

Frederick of Prussia, 198, 213, 326 

Freedom, 20, 90, 241, 261, 330, 

342 
French authors, 49, 59, 61, 110, 198, 

210, 214, 224, 253, 258, 315, 326 
Friendship, vi, 25, 30-32, 44, 132, 

233, 237, 244-245, 255, 328, 343 
Friends' Hill, 166 
Frogs, 11, 97, 101, 103, 115, 124, 151, 

285, 286-288, 300, 354 
Frost and ice, 67, 107, 111, 184-186, 

195, 278, 291, 334, 359, 361 
Froysell, Rev. James, quoted, 25 
Fruit, 68, 72, 105, 215, 222 
Fruitlands, xv, 146 
Fuel, 3, 44, 90, 101, 117, 139, 167 
Future life, 19, 271, 278^ 311 

Gaberdine, 230, 372 

Gaiety of Thoreau, 39, 84, 94 

Gall {the phrenologist), 266 

Gallery, 75, 187, 238, 372 

Ganges, 135 

Garden and garden plants, 306 

Garret, 250, 264 

Garrison, W. L., 241 

Gebir (of Landor), quoted, viii 

Gem of the wood, 347 

Genius, xi, 113, 118, 160, 330 

Gentian, 105, 193, 290, 356 

George Minott, 133-134, 335 

George Robins, xix 

Gerard {botanist), 61 

German authors and studies, 32, 48, 

50, 58, 172, 187, 210, 229, 243, 263, 

308, 329, 338-339 



[ 387 J 



THOREAU 



Gifts, V, 39 

Gill-go-over-the-ground, 299 

Gilpin, Mr., 188-190 

Girls, 16, 138, 321, 327, 359-360 

Glass, 207-208, 240, 277 

God, XX, 25, 29, 58, 89, 90, 122, 162, 

210, 239, 242, 253, 271, 292, 299, 

301, 323, 333, 336, 352-353, 370 
Gods, 72, 89, 117, 118, 180, 224, 228, 

231, 236, 316, 321, 348 
Goethe, mentioned, 50, 58, 172, 187 ; 

quoted, 210, 243, 263, 329, 339 
Golconda, 265 
Golden-rod, 168, 193, 215 
Goldfinch, 105, 296 
Goldsmith {the poet), xx, 305 
Goodness, Original, 17, 236 
Goodwin (the fisher), 11, 68, 106, 

136 
Goose, 350, 361, 373-375 
Goose Pond, 95 
Gorgon face, 132 
Gossamer, 155, 264 
Gowing's Swamp, 15 
Grapes, 159, 167, 193, 216, 267-270 
Grass, 60, 105, 111, 134, 222, 293, 

306 
Gray [the color), 124, 158, 195, 282, 

350 
Gray {the poet), xix, 128 
Greece, 234, 307, 345 
Greek authors, 49, 57, 61, 156, 180, 

184, 228, 235, 247, 275, 307 
Greeks, 314 
Green {the color), 74, 100, 101, 135, 

146, 153, 216, 247, 265, 268, 286, 

290, 350, 363, 371 
Green, C. H., 328 
Greville, Fulke, 52 
Grist-mill, 265, 355-357 
Groton {the town), 358 



Gu^rin, Eugenie, quoted, vii 
Gulls, 23, 136, 254 
Gun, 72, 265, 353 
Gunner {Melvin), 136 



Habington {the poet), 56 

Hafiz, Emerson's version, 162 

Hair, 33, 123, 306 

Hall, Bishop, quoted, 246, 277 

Hamlet, in Truro, 252 

Hardy, Captain, 305 

Harley family, xx, 25 

Harpers Song, 243 

Harp of telegraph, 199-202 

Harris, James, xix 

Harris, T. W., 21, 283 

Harvard {the town), xvi, 146 

Harvard College, 6, 49-50, 249, 273, 

278 
Hassan {in Emerson), 178 
Hassock, 372 
Hawk, 68, 114, 282 
Hawkweeds, 74, 214 
Hawthorne, N., 13, 187, 231, 272 
Hay, 103, 312 
Hayden, described, 108 
Haymarket, Boston, 13 
Hazlitt, quoted, 132 
Heaven, 17, 19, 23, 59, 90, 128, 165, 

201, 342, 373 
Heifer, the Beautiful, 76-77 
Helen Thoreau, 18 
Helicon, 358 
Hell, 251 

Hemans, Mrs., 41 
Henry {Thoreau), v, 4, 18, 29, 140, 

218, 273, 339, 371 
Herbert, George, quoted, 240 
Hermes of Harris, xix 
Heron Pond, 142 
Heron Rock, 23 

[ 388 ] 



INDEX 



Herrick {the poet), 156, 167 

Hibernian, 313 

Hickory-buds, 84 

Hickory-nuts, 182 

Hickory-tree, 291 

Highway, 127 

Hills: in Concord, 22, 100, 144, 166, 
328 ; Blue, 22 ; Peterboro, 22 ; Ma- 
son, 22; White, 21 

Hindoo Mythology, 50, 89 

Hoar, Elizabeth, 341 

Hoar family, 5 

Holbrook, 281 

Holy Dove, 372 

HomeUness, of Thoreau, 34 ; of his 
topics, 83, 242 

Homer, 50, 89, 153, 235 

Homilies of Thoreau, 83, 120, 164 

Honey-bee, 154 

Horace {the poet), 275 

Hornets, 249, 265 

Horse, described, 173-175 

Hosmer, 88, 175 

Hotham, E. S., 352 

Hounds, 124, 295, 360 

Houstonia, 144, 149, 289 

Howe's Tavern, 149 

Hubbard, Cyrus, 69 

Hubbard, Ebenezer, 159 

Hubbard's Bridge, 293 

Hudson's Bay, 106 

Hudson's River, 34, 136 

Hull {the town), 294 

Human and Volucral, 93 

Humble-bee, 73, 77 

Humor of Thoreau, 40, 121, 246 

Hylas, 286, 354 

Hylodes Pickeringii, 136 

Hymen, 147 

Hypsethral, 112, 212 

Hyperborean gods, 117 



Icarus, &S 

Ice, 72, 94, 186, 189, 264, 301, 350 

Ideahty, 66 

Ihad, 283 

Illinois, 281 

Imagination, 32, 85-86, 230 

Immortality, 271, 311 

India, 14, 50 

India-rubber, 41 

Indian {of America), his aspect, 59, 

67, 249, 251, 356 
his food and habits, 18, 59-60, 

89, 136, 158, 295, 313, 356 
in general, 10, 11, 41, 99, 142, 148, 

172, 248, 316, 336, 340-341 
Indian summer, 181 
Innkeeper, 18, 35 
Inns, 143, 146, 361 
Insects, 157, 265 
Inspiration, quoted, 71, 238 
Institutions, 90, 94, 174, 241 
Irish and Irishman, 174, 310, 313 
Island opportunities, 85 
Island, Staten, 21 
Italy, 182, 188, 244 

Jaffrey, N. H. {the town), 43 

Jail, Thoreau in, 273 

January, 99, 117, 151, 173, 290 

Janus Vitalis, quoted, 258 

Jarno, 308 

Jays, 300, 350 

Jean Paul, 308 

Jellies, 146, 186, 282 

Jersey, Isle of, 3-4 

Jesuits and their Relations, 59, 173, 

248, 263 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, xix, 272 
Jomini, quoted, 326 
Jonson, Ben, quoted, 28, 167, 180, 

280 



[ 389 ] 



THOREAU 



Jordan, 353 

Josselyn, 181, 263, 271 

Journals of Thoreau, ix, 10, 14, 20, 

65-68, 173, 199, 339 
Jove, 125, 266, 316, 350 
Joy, 83, 97, 278 
Jugurtha, 322 
July, 3, 12, 44, 122, 151, 157, 170, 

237, 256, 289, 293 
June, 122, 142, 290, 293 

Kalmia glauca, 140 
Katahdin, 9, 42, 255 
Keats, viii, xv 
Keith, Marshal, 326 
Kerosene lamps, 247 
Kibbe {Carlisle farmer), 177 
Kidd, Captain, 271 
King-fisher, 349 
Kitchen-midden, 136, 313 
Kittens, 24 
Knapsack, 18, 41 
Koran, 207 

Labor, of Thoreau, 7, 13, 24, 40, 

66-68, 248, 260, 282, 333, 340 
Labrador, 374, 376 
Laconic rocks, 357 
Lafayette, Mount, 45 
Lagoon, 298, 374 
Lakes : Forest, 166 ; Moosehead, 42 ; 

Morrice, 352 ; Ripple, 95 ; White 

Pond, 350 
Lament (poem), 351 
Landor, quoted, viii 
Lass, the fisher, 367 
Latin authors, vii, 14, 49, 55, 60, 

162, 203, 246, 255, 258, 262, 275, 

280, 316, 322, 326 
Latin language, 57, 102, 137, 212, 

216, 218, 246, 256, 316 



Latins, the, 128, 316 

Lavender, 182 

Leaves, 75, 105, 216, 266-267, 284, 

349, 357 
Lecturing, 35, 214, 241, 256, 260, 334 
Letters of Thoreau, 24, 255, 334-336 
Lewis and Clark, 263 
Lilies, 61, 141, 170, 216, 219, 288 
Lincoln {the town), 144, 163, 172, 

200, 217, 281 
Linnaea, 44 
Linnaeus, 61 
Lithgow, quoted, 132 
London, 40, 210, 229 
Long Wharf, 328 
Love, V, 54, 102, 138, 328, 353, 361 
Lowell {the city), 357 
Lowell {the poet), 17 
Lucan, quoted, 316 
Lucilius, quoted, 280 

Mackerel cloud, 115 

Mackerel-sky, 114, 287 

Mme. de Sevigne, quoted, 198 

Magazines, 17, 72, 255-256, 259, 340 

Magnetism, 202 

Maid, 147, 193, 276, 320, 359-360 

Maiden, 125, 171 

Maine, 9, 59 

Maine woods, be, 8, 116, 254, 340 

Maker of the world, 73 

Malm (apple), 246-247 

Man, 54, 120, 125, 158, 165, 173, 

207, 210, 264, 313-315, 331, 376 
Mankind, 89, 311 
Mann, Horace, Jr., 334 
Maples, 107, 159, 176, 193, 216,285- 

286, 292, 349, 357 
Marathon, 295 
March {the month), 124, 264, 294- 

295, 334 



[ 390 ] 



INDEX 



Marlboro' {the town), 127, 146 
Marlboro' road, 23, 104 
Marlowe {the poet), 55 
Marston, quoted, 198 
Marston Watson, xi, 311 
Martineau, Harriet, 90 
Marvell {the poet), quoted, 262 
Mason, N. H. {the town), 22 
Mason's pasture, 24 
Massachusetts, 3, 21, 41, 143 
Maxims of Thoreau, 66, 78, 83, 86, 

87, 89-90, 97, 113, 118, 120, 122, 

129, 175, 206, 213, 222, 236, 245, 

254, 291, 299, 330-331, 340 
May {the month), 97, 104, 123, 133, 

143, 271, 277, 287, 292-293, 297, 

336, 369 
Mayflower {Epigcea), 139, 194, 216, 

291 
Mayweed, 128 
Meadow-hay, 294 
Meadow-hens, 282 
Meadow mud, 120 
Meadows of Concord, 3, 5, 21, 69, 

96, 107, 144, 158, 219, 221, 267, 

292, 295-297, 355 
Meal, 12, 59, 289, 311, 357-358 
Mecca, 171 
Medicine, 88, 245 
Melancholy, 11, 253-254, 290 
Melodies, 96, 105, 125, 286 
Memorial Poems, xii, xvi, 344-377 
Menu {lawgiver), 50, 255 
Mercury, 202 
Merops (Emerson), 129 
Merrimac {the river), 13, 255, 259 
Mesopotamia, 295 
Metamorphosis, 271 
Michigan, 328 
Middlesex, 18, 256 
Midsummer, 98, 151, 170 



Midwinter, 112, 301 

Mikania scandens, 194 

Miles, Jimmy, 114 

Milestones, 309 

Milk, 276-277, 299, 301, 315 

Milk of ValhaUa, 251 

Milkweed, 154, 193, 204-205 

Milky Way, 251 

Mill, Barrett's, 356 

Mill, Curzon's, 265 

Mill, on seacoast, 366 

Mill-dam {Concord Village), 5, 159 

Milton {the poet), 50, 52, 156, 239, 275 

Mind of the universe, 122 

Minister, 247, 260, 317 

Minister, horn-pout, 298 

Minnesota, 75, 334 

Minott, George, 134, 335 

Miseries, 273 

Misfortune, 304 

Mithridates, 250 

Mohawk, 250 

Mole cricket, 296 

Moloch, 261 

Monadnoc, 22, 42, 125, 145 

Montaigne, 50, 140, 253 

Montfaucon, 275 

Monument, at Concord, 261 

Moon, the, 70, 115, 180, 184 

Moonlight, 34, 255, 272, 286, 357 

Moore {the Concord farmer) , 305 

Moore {the poet), 41 

Moose, 20, 251, 336 

Moosehead Lake, 42 

Moral truth of Thoreau, 16, 25, 121, 

200, 208, 224, 241, 261, 278, 329, 

333, 337 
Morning, 51, 54, 59, 72, 93, 239, 

357 
Morning-glory, 293 
Mosses, 270, 302 

[ 391 ] 



THOREAU 



Mother, 5, 18, 270, 284, 314 
Mottoes, 150, 276, 354 
Mountains, 22, 34, 42-43, 45, 123, 

145, 163, 244, 260, 286 
Mount Desert, 233 
Mount Lafayette, 45 
Mount Misery, 23, 142, 218 
Mount Pelion, 155, 243 
Mud, 284, 299, 313 
Mud-turtle, 211 
Mullein, 155, 167 
Multura in parvo, 199 
Muse, 132, 144, 201 
Music, 38, 95, 145, 149, 171, 202, 

302, 326, 332 
Musketaquit, 141 
Muskrat {Munquash), 115, 123, 219, 

288, 370 
Musophilus, 52, 308 
Myrrh, 332 
Mysteries, 98, 112, 139, 291 

Nail-parings, 89 

Napoleon, 262 

Nashawtuc, 22, 144 

Nashoba, 218 

Nashua {river), 360 

Natick {the town), 59, 144 

Nations, 376 

Natural History, 43, 61, 214, 255, 
281 

Naturalist, x, 67, 270, 275 

Nature personified, v, 12, 23, 52, 61, 
71-74, 84, 85, 88, 94, 95, 98, 102, 
104, 111, 113, 121, 146-147, 181, 
191, 252-253, 288, 294, 301, 313-314 

Nature not personified, x, 20, 65, 39, 
57, 65, 75, 83, 87, 98, 105-106, 
112, 115, 122, 137, 195, 207, 210, 
215, 234, 237, 242, 249, 262, 265, 
280 



Near Home, quoted, 219 

Nectar, 277 

Neottia, 115, 292 

New Bedford {the town), 21 

Newbury {the town), 265 

New England, 3, 22, 61, 102, 163, 

182, 186, 191, 240, 269, 271, 318, 

321, 342 
New Hampshire, 36, 156, 321 
Newton {the town), 18 
New York, ix 
Night, 70, 97, 114, 116-117, 180, 184, 

251, 340 
Night-hawk, 43, 150 
Niles, Thomas, xi 
Nine-Acre Corner, 94, 125, 128 
Nine {the Muses), 107, 201 
Nobscot, 22, 143-144, 218, 371 
Nonnus, quoted, 180 
Noon, 301, 309, 348 
North Carolina, 261 
Norway, 74 
Note-book of Thoreau, 43, 65-66, 

305, 339 
Novels and noveUsts, 58, 273, 275, 

309 
November, 105-107, 277 
Nox, 57, 116 
Nut, 113, 117 
Nut Meadow, 114, 152 
Nymphs, 113 

Oak, 86, 120, 123, 146, 149, 157-159, 

192, 264, 336 
Ocean, 98, 244, 349, 364-365, 368 
October, 105, 138, 249 
Ode to Alcott, 322 
CEnone, 137 
Oil, 12, 338 
Olive, 216, 240, 337 
One at a time, 372 



[ 392 ] 



INDEX 



Orchard, 142, 159, 370 
Originality, 19, 278, 321 
Orleans {the town), 35 
Orpheus, 199, 238, 305 
Orra, a Tragedy, 92 
Osawatomie {John Brown), 16, 241 
Ossian, 275 
Owls, 140 
Ox, 69, 175 

Pan, of cream, 371 

Pan {the god), 125, 259, 266 

Parenthesis of life, 82, 329 

Parthenon, 187 

Partridge, 96, 107, 113, 148 {poem), 

215, 293 
Pascal, quoted, 258 
Past, the, 138, 153, 237, 240 
Pastures, 96, 123, 276 
Patchogue {the town), 36 
Peck, Professor, 265 
Pedler, 35, 162 
Peele {the poet), 57 
Pencil-making, 40 
Pennyroyal, 84 
Percival {the poet), 184 
Persius, 58 

Peterboro', 22, 145, 306 
Philina, 242 
PhilHps, 146, 241 
Philology in Thoreau, 77, 97, 264 
Philosophers, 88, 103, 126, 339 
Philosophy, 111, 164 
Phoenix, 162, 308 
Pierre, St., 61 
Piers Plowman, 326 
Pilgrims, 41, 263, 321 
Pillsbury, Parker, 241 
Pindar, 49 
Pine, 68, 84, 95, 134, 144, 183-185, 

220, 282, 296 



Pipe, Indian, 182 

Pitcher-plant, 181 

Pitch-pine, 142, 184, 341 

Plantain, 194 

Plato, 50, 58, 307 

Pliny, 61, 253 

Plutarch, 245 

Plymouth {the town), xi, 183, 194 

Poems {hy title) 

To Thoreau (Dedication), v-vi 
Quid Inde ? Laura Bassi, vii 
The Infant Jesus, Crashaw, 138 
Sudbury Inn (Wayside), Chan- 

ning, 146-147 

The Partridge, Channing, 148-149 
Transplanting, Emerson, 158 
The Phoenix, Hafiz, 162 
Saadi, Emerson, 171-172 
Hassan, Emerson, 178 
November, Street, 182 
Teamsters^ Song, Channing, 185 
Winter Sunset, Channing, 187 
Autumn, Emerson, 192-193 
November, Channing, 195 
Walden Hermitage, Channing, 

207-210 
The Summer Stream, Channing, 

218-219 
Dawn of Day, Channing, 223-224 
Rumors from an jEolian Harp, 

Thoreau, 235 
Morning, Thoreau, 237 
The Poet '« Delay, Thoreau, 239 
The Hamlet, Channing, 252-253 
Wild Grapes, Channing, 267-270 
The Coming of Spring, Channing, 

285-286 
May, Channing, 292 
Country-Living, Channing, 297 
To Alcott, Channing, 322-323 



[ 393 ] 



THOREAU 



Poems (continued) 

The Departure, Thoreau, 337 
To Henry (at funeral), Channing, 

347 

White Pond, Channing, 347-351 
A Lament, Channing, 351 
Morrice Lake, Channing, 352-353 
Tears in Spring, Channing, 354- 

355 
The Mill Brook, Channing, 355- 

357 

Stillriver, Channing, 358-363 
Truro, Channing, 363-364 
The Old Wrecker, Channing, 364- 

365 

Open Ocean, Channing, 365-366 
Windmill on the Coast, Channing, 

366-367 
Eternal Sea, Channing, 367 
Michel Angelo, Channing, 368 
Old Ocean, Channing, 369 
Baker Farm, Channing, 370-373 
Flight of Geese, Channing, 373-377 



Poet, the, XV, 23, 55, 64, 86, 125, 
154, 167, 171, 192, 212, 223, 238- 
239, 371 

Politian, 162 

Polygala, 139, 217 

Polypody, 103 

Ponds {see their specific names) 

Pope {the poet), 25, 60 ; quoted, 206, 
260 

Poplar, 153, 218 

Potato, 74-75, 89, 215-216 

Potentilla, 74 

Pot of beans, 9 

Poverty, 113, 210, 247 

Prescott {historian), 183, 272 

Procrustes, 136 

Provincetown, 35 



Prussia, 51, 213 
Publishers, xi, 17, 210, 232 
Pump-a-gaw, 128, 140, 152 
Puseyite, 144 

QuARLES, 16, 53, 56 
Quinquinabosset, 156 
Quixote, Don, 224, 308-309 



Rabbit, 108, 348 

Railroad, 77, 134, 165, 185, 200, 220, 

339, 371 
Rain, 42, 44, 70, 94, 122, 266 
Rain-tinted, 207 
Rana palustris, 150, 288 
Rana sylvatica, 101, 287 
Real and Ideal, 50, 66, 126, 145, 200, 

222 
Red-bird, 113, 122 
Redwing {blackbird), 170 
Religion, 87, 90, 210, 225, 271, 341, 

371 
Ribeira, 187 
Riches, 120, 166 
Ricketson, D., letter to, 334 
Ring {the sound), 93-94, 97 
Ring {the circular form), 139, 169 
Ripple lakes, 95, 163 
Rivers, 107, 135, 141, 151, 170, 218, 

251, 264, 267, 277, 299, 313 
Roads in Concord: Lincoln, 163, 

217 ; Marlboro', 23, 104, 127, 275; 

Nine- Acre Corner, 94, 125, 128; 

Price, 23 ; Virginia, 3 
Robin {bird), 96, 134, 211 
Robin Hood, 50, 57-58, 241 
Romans, 60, 220, 316 
Rome, 60, 368 
Round Hill, 169-172 
Rover {a boat), 13 
Rubber, India-, 121 

[ 394 ] 



INDEX 



Rupert's Land, 15 
Ruskin, 55, 58 
Russell, E. H., xiv 

Saadi, 50, 171, 178, 310 

St. Augustine, 206 

Sam Haynes {fisherman), 170 

Sandwich Islands, 59 

Sanguinetto, 124, 370 

Sappho, 184 

Sassafras, 141, 350 

Saxifrage, 98 

Saxonville, 264 

Scent, 96, 299 

Schoolcraft, 58 

School-keeping, 32, 259 

Science, 61, 88, 212, 249, 259, 264, 

281 
Scott, Walter, 218 
Secundus, quoted, 247 
Senecio, 152 
September, 4, 87, 99, 104, 115, 175, 

193, 199-200, 267-268, 305, 328 
Seven-star Lane, 23 
Shade-tree, cabbage as, 159 
Shadow, 153, 157, 184, 222 
Shakespeare, xv-xvi, 55-56, 153, 

192, 235, 239, 333 
Shanty, 195 
Shawsheen River, 3 
Shed, 90, 311 

Shelley, quoted, vii, 273, 304, 326 
Shirley, quoted, 180 
Shrub-oak, 23, 74, 102-103, 113, 

215 
Shylock, 29 

Sickness, 6, 164, 311, 334-335 
Sidney, quoted, 57, 180 
Sin, original, 17 
Skunk, 75, 151, 288 
Sky, 114, 192, 208 



Skymir, 158 

Slavery, 88, 90, 241, 261 

Smilax, 214 

Smith, Henry, xiv 

Snail, 165 

Snake, 211, 287 

Snow, 66, 73, 112, 185, 195, 363 

Snowdrop, 270 

Solitude, 31, 124, 141 

Sophocles, quoted, 228 

Spenser, quoted, viii, 57 

Spiders, 205, 211, 215 

Spring, 94, 123, 138, 292, 354 

Squirrels, 68, 70, 75, 124, 174-176, 

181, 203, 282, 288 
Stars, XX 
Steamboat, 34 
Stoic, 11 

Strawberries, 12, 278 
Street {the poet), 139-140, 153-155, 

167-168, 270 
Storer {the poet), 82, 329 
Style, in writing, 229, 234, 242 
Suckling {the poet), 171 
Sudbury {the river), 170, 172 
Sudbury {the town), 118, 143, 146- 

147, 211 
Summer days, 116, 147, 151, 170, 

192, 215, 218, 331, 348 
Swamp, 15, 181, 217, 374 
Swede {Linnceus), 61 
Swedenborg, 157, 258, 320 
Sympathy, 29, 272 



Tacitus, quoted, 262 

Tanager, 144 

Tang, 184 

Tansy, 215 

Tea, 42 

Teamsters, 185 

Telegraph-harp, 199-202 

[ 395 ] 



THOREAU 



Temperance, 178 

Tennyson, quoted, vii 

Terence, 333 

Texas, 7 

Theatre, 108 

Themistius, quoted, 280 

Theophrastus, 61 

Thoreau, Cynthia {the mother), 5, 

342 
Thoreau, Helen (the sister), 18 
Thoreau, Henry, his ancestry, 3-4 

birth and childhood, 3-5, 18-19 

character, 6-18, 24-25, 31, 38, 67, 
88-89, 118-123 

diaries, 10, 65-66, 173-175, 339 

education, 32, 49, 61, 229, 254 

features, 17, 33 

journeys, 34-35, 42, 44, 65, 264, 334 

literary work, 8, 17, 30, 50, 121, 
206, 232-239, 246, 255-256, 260, 
272, 343 

manual skill, 7, 13, 24, 41-43 

moral nature, 16, 25, 31, 83, 90 

moral strictness, 208, 224, 241, 
248, 261, 336-337, 341 

originality, 20, 29, 39, 278 

religion, 90, 316, 320 

sickness and death, 334, 336, 347 

style, 38-39, 234 

temperament and traits, 8-9, 11, 
15, 18, 24, 33, 117, 121, 199, 329, 
337 

wildness, 20, 102, 341 

walks, 23, 35, 41, 45, 65-67, 70, 
97, 113, 128, 133-175 
Thoreau, John {the father), 3, 7, 18, 

39 
Thoreau, John {the brother), 13, 329 
Thoreau, Sophia, ix, xiii 
Three Friends, 166 
Tiberius, 316 



Titan, 51, 98, 198 

Toads, 245 

Toil, 12, 178 

Torso, 187 

Tortoise, 284-285 

Transcendentalist, 8 

Traps, 68, 85 

Travail, 42 

Truro, 271, 363 

Turner {the painter), 55, 253, 327 

Turtles, 88, 283, 288, 298 

Tusser, 61 

Valhalla, 251 

Values, 20 

Van Waagen, 187 

Varro, 60 

Vaughan {the poet), quoted, 132, 

159, 169, 326 
Vendidad, 234 
Vermont, 8 
Viburnum, 193 
Violet, 139 
Vireo, 203 
Virgil, 50, 55, 203 
Vishnu, 50 
Vitruvius, 14, 191 
Voltaire, quoted, 210 

Umbrella, 35, 42 
Universe, 86, 122, 139 

Wachusett {mountain), 22, 107, 255, 

259, 319 
Wafer, xix 

Walden (the book), 7, 8, 17, 38-39, 

55, 230, 232 
Walden {the lake), 7, 192, 207, 230, 

260, 275, 290, 299, 329, 347 
Walden Woods, 23, 49, 55 
Walking, Country, xiii, 132 



[ 396 ] 



INDEX 



Walks and Talks, 131-195, 305-328 
Walpole, Horace, xix 
Walton, Izaak, 41 
Wanderer, The (poem), xi 
Waterbury, Ct., 334 
Watson, Marston, xi, 311 
Wayland {ihe town), 23, 144 
Week, The (book), 9, 13, 17, 30, 38-39, 
49-55, 230, 232-233, 253, 259, 272 
Wellfleet {the town), 35 
Weston (the town), 4, 22, 169 
Whippoorwill, 148 
Wild apples, 39, 246 
Wilson, A., 89 
Wilson, Sir Robert, viii 
Wine, 71, 243, 274 



Winter, 148, 183, 193, 292, 319, 350, 

358, 370 
Wither {the poet), quoted, 247 
Wood, Anthony, xix 
Woodchuck, 221 
Wood-thrush, 71 
Woods, Maine (the book), ix, 8, 254, 

340 
Wordsworth, quoted, 88, 102, 280, 

340 
Wotton {the poet), 263 

Yankee, 4, 234, 238 

York Factory, 106 

Young {the poet), quoted, 304 

Ygdrasil, 166 



31^77-9 



